'brew doctor' command not recognizing path changes

Question

When I run brew doctor, I get /user/bin occurs before /usr/local/bin So I changed my /etc/paths and my ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist as this post said to do. When I run brew doctor again, I still get the same error. Any tips? Thanks

Answer 1

If you change environment files, you have to tell the shell to manually read them to update the environment. Closing the terminal and reopening is one way to do it, but a more efficient way is to use the source command.

Also, I would avoid editing any files that require sudo access, such as /etc/paths. A safer way to edit your path would be to add the line

export PATH=/new/path/name/:$PATH

to the file ~/.profile (it may not exist on your computer) then run

$ source ~/.profile

to have your changes take effect. By editing your ~/.profile instead of a system file such as /etc/paths you are safeguarding against user error. If you need to reset to the default PATH settings at some point in the future, simply delete that line from ~/.profile. However, you will have to manually change /etc/paths again to revert to default. ~/.profile will automatically be sourced by Terminal.app when a new shell is opened if it exists, so you only need to do this once.

Answer 2

Whenever you change environment settings, you have to start a new shell to pick up those changes. This is by design, to ensure that changes you make won't impact existing shell sessions.

You will see this behaviour in most OSes.