On Jan 14, 2021, at 09:22, Peng Yu <pengyu.ut@gmail.com> wrote:
The /etc/paths.d directory on Mac OS X contains the following directory. Some packages have their PATH variables set there.
For Python, I have to set the PATH manually in my ~/.bashrc. Should the Python developers consider setting PATH in /etc/paths.d as well?
==> /etc/paths.d/100-rvictl <== /Library/Apple/usr/bin
==> /etc/paths.d/40-XQuartz <== /opt/X11/bin
==> /etc/paths.d/com.vmware.fusion.public <== /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Public
Thanks for the suggestion. At first glance, that would seem to be an attractive option; it's something we've looked at recently. Unfortunately, there is a major usability issue with it on current macOS (10.15 Catalina and 11 Big Sur) where Apple now provides both a "python3' and a "pip3" stub in /usr/bin that link to versions they supply in current Xcode or Command Line Tools releases. Those versions are supplied primarily to support other Xcode tools and are not intended to provide a full user Python installation. The problem is that paths added via /etc/paths.d are appended to PATH *after* /usr/local/bin and /usr/bin so it is not possible to override "python3" and "pip3" this way. We are still considering ways to improve the path management for python.org installers on macOS but simply relying on /etc/paths.d isn't sufficient, alas. -- Ned Deily nad@python.org -- []