/usr/libexec/path_helper problem

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

I'm having problems with /usr/libexec/path_helper on some of my machines
& I've been completely unable to discover what it is that's going wrong :-(

Now, as part of my install process of MacPorts I'm doing this :

########################
# setup the system paths
('paths')

mkdir -p  /etc/paths.d
cp    -np /etc/paths /etc/paths.orig
mv    -n  /etc/paths /etc/paths.d/999macosx
touch     /etc/paths

echo "${prefix}/bin"        >  /etc/paths.d/000macports
echo "${prefix}/sbin"       >> /etc/paths.d/000macports

echo "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin"   >
/etc/paths.d/888developer

I waited until 10.13.2 was released before upgrading from 10.12
I've got 4 computers with 10.13.2
On two of these I get the correct result from running
#=> /usr/libexec/path_helper
PATH="/macports/bin:/macports/sbin:/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin";
export PATH;

On the other two I get this :
#=> /usr/libexec/path_helper
PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/macports/bin:/macports/sbin:/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin";
export PATH;

No matter what I've tried I get an incorrect ${PATH} value :-(

Under 10.12 & before I had no problems at all !
OK - there was once under 10.5 that path_helper was buggy for some time

I've tried diff on the binaries, but they seem to be identical.

On the affected machines, I solved this by installing an old scripted
version of path_helper from 10.5 - that I had lying around - under
/usr/local/bin & modifying /private/etc/profile to point to this instead

Anybody else seeing this kind of problem ???

-- 
Bjarne D Mathiesen
Korsør ; Danmark ; Europa
----------------------------------------------------------------------
denne besked er skrevet i et totalt M$-frit miljø
macOS 10.13.2 High Sierra (17C205)
2 x 3,46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon ; 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB