Hacker News Reader

Comment by soneil | Hacker News Reader

I really like the /etc/paths.d/ mechanism the mac uses. Such a simple thing, I'm surprised I haven't seen it adopted elsewhere.

View on HN

systemd has `/etc/environment.d/`[1], which can be used to set/update `PATH`. Support for getting that into a users session isn't very wide (currently GDM and KDE plasma only[2]), but hopefully will be in the future.

[1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/envi... [2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Environment_variables#Per_W...

There are a couple of problems with environment.d - it cannot be made idempotent, and can't splice into the middle.

These shouldn't be a problem since it runs early enough and should be controlled by a single sane party, but makes porting a pain.

I don't understand what problem your [2] link is referring to, since the whole point of systemd user sessions is that it happens before graphical stuff.

I've used a Mac and linux for 20+ years and never knew about this. Maybe coming to OS X from linux meant I never bothered to ask the official way to set a path.

How did you find out about it? This feels like a hidden secret.

Is that directory maintained across OS updates?

I don't think I've ever lost a setting from there. the manpage (path_helper) was last updated 2007, so I think it's fair to say it's not a very dynamic corner of the OS.

I was worried more sometimes the OS will just reset everything in /etc (and other places) on reinstall

Reply on news.ycombinator.com