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None of the paths I have in the /etc/paths.d directory are being added to $PATH in any of the shells on my High Sierra system. Presumably there’s supposed to be something in some file that says to look in /etc/paths.d when a shell starts; what is that something and where should it be?

Ideally I’d like to know a proper way (i.e. not some weird hack that technically solves the problem but will cause more problems down the line, because that’s almost certainly how I got into this mess) to get $PATH to use the contents of /etc/paths.d for at least bash and zsh.

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  • Which shell are you actually using, which shell profiles (.bashrc etc.) have you created?
    – nohillside ♦
    Commented Nov 18, 2020 at 6:58
  • Out of curiosity, why do you need to add /etc/paths.d to PATH? PATH is used by the shell to find executables, and there shouldn't be any in /etc or its subfolders.
    – jaume
    Commented Nov 18, 2020 at 6:59
  • 1
    @jaume Adding entries (files) to /etc/paths.d is an easy way to add path elements systemwide without tampering with /etc/profile or /etc/paths.
    – nohillside ♦
    Commented Nov 18, 2020 at 7:00
  • @nohillside I have .zshenv, .bash_profile, and .bashrc. I didn’t create any of those, though I have had to mess with them after various install scripts had their way. I use bash more often than zsh.
    – Gregory Gan
    Commented Nov 18, 2020 at 7:29
  • /etc/profile gets executed automatically, so maybe one of the . profiles overwrites PATH for good.
    – nohillside ♦
    Commented Nov 18, 2020 at 7:42

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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/usr/libexec/path_helper is used to build PATH from the default in /etc/paths and the entries in /etc/paths.d (see man path_helper for details). By default this is called in /etc/profile which is executed for each sh/bash/zsh style login shell.

On my system /etc/profile looks like this

# System-wide .profile for sh(1) and friends

if [ -x /usr/libexec/path_helper ]; then
    eval `/usr/libexec/path_helper -s`
fi

if [ "${BASH-no}" != "no" ]; then
    [ -r /etc/bashrc ] && . /etc/bashrc
fi
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  • That first if was what I needed. Thanks!
    – Gregory Gan
    Commented Nov 18, 2020 at 7:26

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