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I saw a thread here that advised to set the PATH variable via RCEnvironment on macs but on the about of the application it says:

Setting the PATH variable can be hazardous to your applications health. Only change this if you are sure of what you are doing.

In what way can that be hazardous?

Is there another better way to set paths so it can be visible not only from terminal?

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If you edit the PATH so that an app can't load a required proram might make it fail. As an example, removing /usr/bin from the PATH would be a pretty bad idea.

I don't understand what you mean in the second question, but the more unixy way of setting environment variables like PATH is to use either the global /etc/profile or your own ~/.profile to do this.

Anyway, if you don't know what you are doing, don't mess with it.

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  • well i don't remove it i just want to add some extra like usr/share/groovy/bin so is not about removing is about adding...i don;t know how a variable can be removed via RCEnvironemnt tool.I noticed is possible only to add...and is added to the current PATH variable..that is why i don't understand the mention from their about
    – Cris
    Apr 7, 2012 at 9:51
  • Related to the second...there are some GUI apps that it is said that do not have access to the PATH which is set via /etc/profile. this answer serverfault.com/questions/67594/…
    – Cris
    Apr 7, 2012 at 9:56

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