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Comment by duped | Hacker News Reader

In my (fever) dreams, there's a directory at `/var/share/env` with the rule that regular files are <file name>=<file contents> and all other file types are ignored. The `env` program can slurp all the files to create the default environment before applying whatever customization are in dotfiles for a shell.

Want to add to path? `echo ':<directory>' >> /var/share/env/PATH` (or `env --add PATH :<directory>`, or something like that).

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Why not make your dreams real then? Here's a barebones zsh function. (Bash fails at export part. If remember right, in past, had wanted to set variables from subshell results and used some eval shenanigans.)

    function my_env() {
        ENVDIR=${ENVDIR:-/var/share/env}
        arg="$1"
        case "$arg" in
            --add)
                echo "$3" >> $ENVDIR/"$2"
                ;;
            *)
                (
                    for f in $ENVDIR/*; do
                        export $(basename $f)="$(< $f | sed -z 's/\n:/:/g')"
                    done
                    [[ -z "$arg" ]] && env || env "$arg"
                )
                ;;
        esac
    }

(Of course, that's a bad approach but your idea is certainly doable in a good way.)

you could call it a "Registry"... ;)

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