Re: Changing the PATH from emacs?

[Sven Joachim]

On 2008-02-11 18:52 +0100, Stefan Arentz wrote:

> Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de> writes:
>
>> On 2008-02-11 18:25 +0100, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>>
>>> Am 11.02.2008 um 17:28 schrieb Stefan Arentz:
>>>
>>>> There doesn't seem to be a way to do this through Emacs.app/Info.plist
>>>> so my question is whether it possible to change the PATH from my
>>>> .emacs profile?
>>>
>>>     (setenv "PATH" (concat "/opt/local/bin" ":" (getenv "PATH")))
>>
>> Are you sure that this will work?  AFAIK `setenv' only modifies the
>> environment of subprocesses; where Emacs searches for programs is
>> determined by the lisp variable `exec-path'.
>
> Indeed. It did not work, I tested it the wrong way and was confused.
>
> Your exec-path hint did the trick though!

It might be best to set up both.  When Emacs executes a program directly
(such as in call-process or start-process), you need to modify
exec-path, but when it uses a shell (as in shell-command), it is the
PATH environment variable that is relevant.

Cheers,
       Sven