How exactly to set up and use environment variables on mac

Question

What is the proper (2021 way) of creating a permanent environment variable on a Mac (macOS Big Sur) and then use it within a Java project.

There are many very old posts regarding this topic. None of them seem to work properly nowadays.

1. How to add a permanent environment value (through terminal)?
2. And how can I use it in a Java code?

I'm also not sure how I was able to add my testvar=testvalue to the list, because I tried so many files (although it seems none of them worked), by adding export testvar=testvalue to the following files:

• /etc/paths
• ~/.bashrc
• ~/.bash_profile
• ~/.profile
• /etc/profile

Also after inserting it into each file I used source {file}.

So at this point I have no idea which is the proper way to create and have it permanently, and being able to use it in my Java code.

So far, I can print the variables into the terminal like this:

printenv

My variables are getting listed, example:

testvar=testvalue

In my Java code, I get null when using:

System.getenv("testvar")

However using an other variable names that were not created by me, but the macOS system (eg. "USER") prints the value as expected.

Answer 1

macOS Big Sur uses zsh as the default login shell and interactive shell.

If you’re using a Bash profile, such as to set environment variables, aliases, or path variables, you should switch to using a zsh equivalent.

For example:

• .zprofile is equivalent to .bash_profile and runs at login, including over SSH
• .zshrc is equivalent to .bashrc and runs for each new Terminal session

You can create .zprofile and enter the enter the environment variables there.

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Reference

Answer 2

This depends on the shell which you are using. For Big Sur, the standard shell is zsh, which might explain why .bashrc and other bash-related configuration files did not work. If you want to set environment variables for your account in zsh, try to create a ~/.zshenv file and put the variable declarations there.

See also: http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Files.html#Files

Answer 3

you can edit zprofile using the following command

sudo nano ~/.zprofile

and add your PATH variable.

# Setting PATH for Python 3.9
# The original version is saved in .zprofile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

to add multiple values to the PATH variable, just add more PATH keys. For example, this is how I added multiple path variables in my M1 mac Monterey

# Setting PATH for Python 3.9
# The original version is saved in .zprofile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/bin:${PATH}"
PATH="/Users/<name>/.local/bin"
PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin"
export PATH