On MacOS X, I want both shell and Aqua applications to have the same view on installed and preferred applications.
However, unlike on other Unixoid systems, OS X runs no user login shell which reads my
~/.profile settings on startup. The
mechanism was replaced by the ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist
property list, which provides an initial environment at login.
Unhelpfully, it is also read at login time only, i.e., after changing
it a user has to logout and login again to actually see the changes
taking effect.
Property lists are used in several other places, and helpfully, OS X
comes with a property list editor (Property List Editor.app):
Nevertheless, it is possible to keep settings in one place by reading out the environment file from the shell profile:
export PATH=$(defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment PATH)
Depending on the default shell used, the code goes
into ~/.zshenv (zsh) or ~/.profile
(sh-likes), etc.
The above screenshot shows other useful settings, like CVS_RSH, locale settings, etc.