How do I configure git to inherit my specific $PATH environment variable? - macos

Question

My goal is to have a set of dot files shared between the many shell accounts I have so that I can have a similar environment in each one. Because of that, I don't want machine/environment specific information in my .git files or my .bash files.
On my MacOSX machine, the default emacs version is 22. I have installed a newer version of emacs (24) in /usr/local/bin. In my .bashrc file I set my default editor to emacs: export EDITOR=emacs. Before this, I also set up my path so that /usr/local/bin comes before /usr/bin so that the newer version of emacs gets selected.
When I use git to create commit messages, it always picks the one in /usr/bin instead of the one in /usr/local/bin. Git is ignoring my $PATH settings. I used to hardcode the location of the version of emacs I wanted in my .gitconfigure file, but that won't work when I use that same .gitconfigure file on my Ubuntu server. (If it's unclear, what I'm saying is that modifying my .gitconfigure editor option to point to a hardcoded won't work for me).
Why doesn't git respect my $PATH settings?
How do I configure git to use the correct emacs?
Edit: Adding more context
There is a suggestion to put environment variables in .profile/.bash_profile. Here's some relevant code from my .bashrc and my .bash_profile
.bashrc
Note: I wrote a bash function called vercomp which compares version numbers.
OS=''
case $OSTYPE in
darwin*) OS='Mac' ;;
linux*) OS='Linux' ;;
*) OS='UNKNOWN' ;;
esac
export EDITOR=emacs
if [[ $OS = 'Mac' ]]; then
### EMACS VERSION CHECK
# make sure that we're working with emacs >= 24
wanted_ver=24
curr_ver=`emacs --version | grep -oE '[[:digit:]]+\.[.[:digit:]]*'`
vercomp $curr_ver $wanted_ver
# If vercomp returns 2, then our current emacs version isn't good enough.
if [[ $? == 2 ]]; then
if [[ -e '/usr/local/bin/emacs' ]]; then
emacs_path='/usr/local/bin/emacs -nw'
elif [[ -e '/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs' ]]; then
emacs_path='/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs -nw'
else
echo -n "EMACS VERSION OUT OF DATE: $curr_emacs_version. "
echo 'Install a newer version.'
emacs_path=''
fi
export EDITOR="$emacs_path"
alias emacs="$emacs_path"
fi
fi
.bash_profile
source ~/.bashrc
[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM into a shell
session *as a function*
LESS=-FRX;export LESS

Answer 1

I expect to have an answer that explains WHY MacOSX doesn't pick up my
bashrc/profile environment changes and a solution to HOW I can get
MacOSX to pick up those changes.
This is not specific to OS X - here is an example:
$ uname -a
Linux hostname 3.13.7-gentoo #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Mar 24 18:40:46 CET 2014 i686 Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU 330 # 1.60GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
$ cat .bashrc
export EDITOR="emacs"
$ echo $EDITOR
/usr/bin/vim
$ mv .bashrc .bash_profile
$ logout
Connection to hostname closed.
$ ssh hostname
$ echo $EDITOR
emacs
For what I know and used to "live" is that environment variables are expected to reside inside /etc/profile (system wide) and can be extended and overwritten on a user level basis inside ~/.profile respectively ~/.bash_profile.
From man bash:
When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a
non-interac- tive shell with the --login option, it first reads
and executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file
exists. After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile,
~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and
executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable.
On the other hand. .bashrc is the place to go where one places custom functions, aliases, prompt configuration, etc.
So a simple solution to your specific question - aside from using another git version in your special situation - would be to simply move your environmant variables from your .bashrc into a .bash_profile.
The Linux From Scratch project provides some pretty good examples about how to organize the bash shell startup files. Specific problems on OS X are tackled inside "Setting environment variables in OS X?".

Answer 2

Do not set variables in .bashrc. Bash only looks at this file in interactive sessions, so programs outside of an interactive session will never see any variables from .bashrc.
For bash, environment variables belong into ~/.profile!.
To fix your problem immediately, you may set $EDITOR to an absolute path:
if [[ -e /usr/local/bin/emacs ]]; then
export EMACS=/usr/local/bin/emacs
else
export EMACS=emacs
However, the issue points to a deeper problem in your environment setup, but your question currently lacks some information (see my comment).
Generally, $PATH and environment variables are a mess on OS X, because there's no single place to change them (for instance, profile variables do not propagate to the desktop and GUI applications), and because OS X itself meddles with $PATH by means of path_helper. You need to be extra careful about where you set variables, and you need use workarounds like exec-path-from-shell to have your environment variables available in GUI applications.

Answer 3

Any program is free to set PATH inside of itself to whatever it wants -- this tactic is often used in setuid programs to prevent execution of the wrong (or downright bad) executables.
You'll need to find out whether Emacs Terminal.app creates a Bash that runs ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, both, or something else entirely. (Sorry, I'm a vim user.)

Answer 4

Try this:
export VISUAL=emacs
I just tried export VISUAL=gedit from bash on my Ubuntu and now git uses gedit
when called from that terminal.