Question

Adams-MacBook-Pro% brew doctor                                 

Error: /usr/bin occurs before /usr/local/bin
This means that system-provided programs will be used instead of those
provided by Homebrew. The following tools exist at both paths:

    clusterdb
    createdb
    createlang
    createuser
    dropdb
    droplang
    dropuser
    ecpg
    git
    git-cvsserver
    git-receive-pack
    git-shell
    git-upload-archive
    git-upload-pack
    gitk
    pg_config
    pg_dump
    pg_dumpall
    pg_restore
    pg_upgrade
    psql
    reindexdb
    vacuumdb

Consider amending your PATH so that /usr/local/bin
is ahead of /usr/bin in your PATH.

Here is my path:

Adams-MacBook-Pro% echo $PATH                                  
/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin

I thought it was dangerous to move things to the front? How do I solve this problem? Also, I’m not even sure where to find where /user/bin is declared in the path.

Thanks

Answer 1

$PATH is just a variable containing a string. To put something in front:

% PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
% echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin

This is not dangerous, since it only applies to the current shell you have open (it will not affect the path for your system or other shells).

To change the path automatically for all shells you open, put it in ~/.profile. You can create this file if it doesn’t already exist.

In ~/.profile:

homebrew=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
export PATH=$homebrew:$PATH

export makes the variable available to any child processes of the shell.