Setting environment variables on OS X

Question

What is the proper way to modify environment variables like PATH in OS X?

I\'ve looked on Google a little bit and found three different files to edit:

Answer 1

Well, I'm unsure about the /etc/paths and ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist files. Those are new.

But with Bash, you should know that .bashrc is executed with every new shell invocation and .bash_profile is only executed once at startup.

I don't know how often this is with Mac OS X. I think the distinction has broken down with the window system launching everything.

Personally, I eliminate the confusion by creating a .bashrc file with everything I need and then do:

ln -s .bashrc .bash_profile