Installing Sublime Text's command line tool 'subl' in terminal, permission denied?

Question

I\'m tryng to use Sublime Text from the terminal, for example by typing subl.

I\'m following the steps from Sublime Text\'s website:

Answer 1

Check whether "~/bin/" is included in the path.

A better options is to create the symlink in /usr/bin directory instead.

sudo ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" /usr/bin/subl

Answer 2

I am assuming that you don't have the bin directory. You can do the following:

cd 
mkdir bin
sudo ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" ~/bin/subl

ln -s will create a alias of the subl file in your bin directory and you will be able to run the command.

If this still doesn't work you will have to edit your .bash_profile. You can do it by following commands: (NOTE: For this to work you need to have done the above steps already.)

1. Open your .bash_profile:

   cd                  // this will get you back to home directory
   vim .bash_profile   // this will open your .bash_profile file
   

2. Edit .bash_profile: press I to get into "insert" mode and add following:

   export PATH=$PATH:~/bin
   

3. Save and exit. Press Esc to get into command mode:

   :wq   // saves and close file
   exit  // exits terminal
   

4. Reopen the terminal:

   subl --help
   

That should bring up the help for Sublime Text.

Answer 3

My personal preference for the path to the third-party application-specific symbolic links (e.g. subl, brew, github, mate, etc) is:

/usr/local/bin

Why not /usr/bin/?

1. /usr/bin is a "sacred" place. It is generally recommended to store static binaries that are maintained by package management systems. subl is not this case.

2. subl is not stable enough to be stored in /usr/bin with other basic BSD binaries (e.g. find, man, make, etc). You must modify/delete subl symbolic link manually if (a) the developers of Sublime Text Editor decide to change its app name in the future releases (as BBEdit Lite was changed to TextWrangler after version 6.1), or (b) you may simply wish to uninstall Sublime Text Editor.

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Therefore, I suggest you execute the following line, assuming /usr/local/bin/ exists:

ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" /usr/local/bin/subl