A GNU Emacs library to ensure environment variables inside Emacs look the same as in the user's shell.
Ever find that a command works in your shell, but not in Emacs?
This happens a lot on OS X, where an Emacs instance launched as a GUI app inherits a default minimal set of environment variables that are probably not the ones you see in a terminal window. Similarly, if you start Emacs as a daemon from systemd
or launchd
, it will run with a default set of environment variables.
This library solves this problem by copying important environment variables from the user's shell: it works by asking your shell to print out the variables of interest, then copying them into the Emacs environment.
Supported shells:
zsh
bash
tcsh
fish
nu
Note that shell variables which have not been exported as environment variables (e.g. using the "export" keyword) may not be visible to exec-path-from-shell
.
If you experience issues, enable the variable exec-path-from-shell-debug
before runnin functions from the package: this will produce detailed logging in *Messages*
about the shell command line and output.
Installable packages are available via MELPA: do M-x package-install RET exec-path-from-shell RET
.
Alternatively, download the latest release or clone the repository, and install exec-path-from-shell.el
with M-x package-install-file
.
Add the following to your init.el
(after calling package-initialize
):
(when (memq window-system '(mac ns x)) (exec-path-from-shell-initialize))
This sets $MANPATH
, $PATH
and exec-path
from your shell, but only when executed in a GUI frame on OS X and Linux.
If you launch Emacs as a daemon from systemd
or similar, you might like to use the following snippet:
(when (daemonp) (exec-path-from-shell-initialize))
You can copy values of other environment variables by customizing exec-path-from-shell-variables
before invoking exec-path-from-shell-initialize
, or by calling exec-path-from-shell-copy-env
, e.g.:
(exec-path-from-shell-copy-env "PYTHONPATH")
This function may also be called interactively.
The author uses the following configuration snippet before calling exec-path-from-shell-initialize
:
(require 'exec-path-from-shell) (dolist (var '("SSH_AUTH_SOCK" "SSH_AGENT_PID" "GPG_AGENT_INFO" "LANG" "LC_CTYPE" "NIX_SSL_CERT_FILE" "NIX_PATH")) (add-to-list 'exec-path-from-shell-variables var))Setting up your shell startup files correctly
Note that your shell will inherit Emacs's environment variables when it is run by exec-path-from-shell
-- to avoid surprises your config files should therefore set the environment variables to their exact desired final values, i.e. don't do this:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
but instead do this:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
To be safe, exec-path-from-shell
starts an interactive (and login) shell by default, but this can be much slower than necessary. Interactive shells often have fancy features enabled that are only helpful when one interacts directly with the shell, and this can frequently cause startup time to exceed 750ms. This can be avoided:
~/.profile
, ~/.bash_profile
, ~/.zshenv
instead of ~/.bashrc
and ~/.zshrc
.exec-path-from-shell-arguments
appropriately (often to nil
) before calling exec-path-from-shell-initialize
so that it will start a non-interactive shell.To learn more about how popular shells load start-up files, read this helpful article.
Makingexec-path-from-shell
faster
If evaluation takes more than exec-path-from-shell-warn-duration-millis
(500ms by default) then exec-path-from-shell
will print a warning.
-i
and still get the right environment variable settings. When "-i"
is then removed from exec-path-from-shell-arguments
, this package becomes more efficient.exec-path-from-shell-copy-env
repeatedly, since each invocation starts a shell. Instead, set exec-path-from-shell-variables
to the full list of vars you want, and call exec-path-from-shell-initialize
once.C-h f exec-path-from-shell-initialize
C-h f exec-path-from-shell-copy-env
💝 Support this project and my other Open Source work via Patreon
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