$PATH variable not properly set in gvim/MacVim when it is opened from the finder

Question

I am using MacVim (basically gvim for the mac).

If I open macvim from the command line then my $PATH variable will be properly set.

If I ope

Answer 1

I had this same issue but it only appeared after setting my default shell to zsh like so

export SHELL=/bin/zsh

It seems that there is a bug in the OS X zsh setup. The work around in brief is to merge /etc/zshenv into /etc/zprofile. In my case I didn't have a /etc/zprofile so just moving over the file did the trick:

sudo mv /etc/zshenv /etc/zprofile

This post describes the solution in more detail.

Answer 2

For me, simply creating a new symbolic link from .zprofile to .zshrc did the trick:

ln -s ~/.zshrc ~/.zprofile

Answer 3

The difference in the PATHs probably has something to do with the difference between a login shell (logging in) and a non-login shell (bringing up a console).

From the bash man page:

When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell ... it looks for ~/.bash_profile...

When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, bash reads and executes commands from /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc...

What I did to get around this issue was to add the following code to my ~/.bash_profile, telling it to source my ~/.bashrc if it exists:

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
    . ~/.bashrc
fi

Answer 4

The place to set environment variables on the Mac for GUI applications (those started via loginwindow, the Finder, etc.) is ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist

Alternately in MacVim you can choose to launch vim processes in a login-shell (look in the preferences).

For more info see this post.