Setting environment variables on Fedora 16?

[shaunsingh14]

Good day, fellow Fedora users. I migrated to Fedora 16 from Arch Linux because a kernel upgrade caused my system to break (my fault for enabling testing repo, but I really didn't feel like going through an ncurses-based installation and end up at a command line again). Fedora was my primary choice because I had a lot of fond memories with it, and I missed dealing with RPMs. The only complaint I have is the lack of a BSD-style init and /etc/rc.conf (but that's another story).

The main reason I ran for help here is because I'm in the process of installing the Android SDK, and instead of making it user-specific, I wanted it to be system-wide, because I'm sharing this computer with two other people who like to tinker around with Android, and rather than giving them my computer password and risk them messing up any sensitive documents I have, I'd rather make them two seperate accounts and place ADB/Fastboot/etc. in their $PATH (did I word that correctly?).

I accomplished this in Arch Linux by modifying /etc/profile and appending the location of the SDK to the end of the PATH line. However it seems I can't do so in Fedora (at least, not anymore).

# System wide environment and startup programs, for login setup
# Functions and aliases go in /etc/bashrc

# It's NOT a good idea to change this file unless you know what you
# are doing. It's much better to create a custom.sh shell script in
# /etc/profile.d/ to make custom changes to your environment, as this
# will prevent the need for merging in future updates.

What file contains the system-wide PATH? I just wanna append the location of the SDK and get on with my computing.

[trekkie690]

if i remember correctly you can add it to /etc/profile. But that said i would have to look through my RHEL/Fedora book. Course its safer to put the path in each profile, which you just need to add to the ~/.bash_profile for each user.

[shaunsingh14]

Originally Posted by trekkie690

if i remember correctly you can add it to /etc/profile. But that said i would have to look through my RHEL/Fedora book. Course its safer to put the path in each profile, which you just need to add to the ~/.bash_profile for each user.

I searched through /etc/profile, but I can't find any lines that resemble this:

 PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:"

Strange, in every GNU/Linux operating system I've used, there was always a line like that (save for Ubuntu, which had /etc/environment. )

EDIT: I've managed to create a script in /etc/profile.d/ which took care of it.

[shaun@the-enforcer ~]$ cat /etc/profile.d/android-sdk.sh
# appends location of android-sdk-linux to PATH
ANDROID_SDK=/opt/android-sdk-linux
export ANDROID_SDK
PATH="$ANDROID_SDK/tools:/$ANDROID_SDK/platform-tools:$PATH"
[shaun@the-enforcer ~]$

I stll don't see why I had to create a new variable JUST to append an SDK into my $PATH.

[marko]

Or you could modify the proper shell configuration file template in /etc/skel, then when you create a new user the /etc/skel/.bash_profile is copied to the new user's home directory by useradd (or system-config-user if you use the GUI user add tool).

Just modify the PATH in /etc/skel/.bash_profile as you want for the Android SDK

But if you want to use a different shell, you may need to add your own template (like /etc/skel/.tcshrc for tcsh )

[Gareth Jones]

Originally Posted by shaunsingh14

[shaun@the-enforcer ~]$ cat /etc/profile.d/android-sdk.sh
# appends location of android-sdk-linux to PATH
ANDROID_SDK=/opt/android-sdk-linux
export ANDROID_SDK
PATH="$ANDROID_SDK/tools:/$ANDROID_SDK/platform-tools:$PATH"
[shaun@the-enforcer ~]$

It might be better to use Fedora's "pathmunge()" function (inherited by profile.d files from /etc/profile):

# /etc/profile.d/android-sdk.sh
# Prepend Android SDK tool directories to $PATH.
export ANDROID_SDK="/opt/android-sdk-linux"
pathmunge "$ANDROID_SDK/platform-tools"
pathmunge "$ANDROID_SDK/tools"

pathmunge() ensures that that $PATH is sane and without duplicates etc.

I stll don't see why I had to create a new variable JUST to append an SDK into my $PATH.

If it's just to save typing "/opt/android-sdk-linux" twice (and so that you only have to change that in one place if you move it), then that's reason enough for a shell variable. That wouldn't require it to be exported to the environment though,

If the Android SDK tools themselves use the environment variable, then it should be exported.