WordNet environment variables

[Sam Kuper]

On 4 March 2012 21:58, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> wrote:
> On Mar 4, 2012, at 14:12, Brandon Allbery wrote:
>> On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 11:28, Sam Kuper wrote:
>>> In any case, shouldn't MacPorts set them automatically (and,
>>> presumably, also unset them if MacPorts is later used to uninstall
>>> WordNet)?
>>
>> That means editing people's shell profiles (which might be ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile, or potentially others) or possibly ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist on install and again on removal.  This is generally not a good idea; there are too many ways for it to go wrong, because it's not designed to be edited that way.
>>
>> (Linux can do it not because the files are different but because the systemwide versions of the files specifically check for additional settings files; OS X doesn't do this and editing Apple's startup files is not a good idea because the worst case failure mode is you run Software Update and thereafter no longer can log in.)
>
> Right. MacPorts ports don't edit your environment. If you need environment variables set, edit your ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile or wherever you typically do that and do it there manually.

Ah, OK; thank you.

> MacPorts itself does a one-time modification to your profile to edit the PATH, so that you can more easily run MacPorts and the software it installs.

I knew about this modification, which is why I was surprised that the
WordNet environment variables weren't also set by MacPorts; but I
hadn't realised that this was the only modification of this kind that
MacPorts makes.

Thanks, folks

Sam