CODEWITHSUNDEEP
emacseshell
user1854496
user1854496

Reputation: 622

Eshell can't find script on eshell path

My goal

I'm trying to add "/opt/bin" to the list of paths eshell uses to find scripts. So far I've tried to do this in three ways

Attempts so far

1) (setenv "PATH" (concat "/opt/bin:" (getenv "PATH")))

2) (eshell/addpath "/opt/bin:")

3) (add-to-list 'exec-path "/opt/bin")

The first attempt does add "/opt/bin" to eshell's path (it shows up as the first instance of "/opt/bin:" in the output of calling "which lein" below)

The second attempt also adds "/opt/bin" to eshell's path (it shows up as the second instance of "/opt/bin:" in the output of calling "which lein" below)

I actually have had "/opt/bin" added to my exec-path for a while. I believe I did this so that /opt/bin would be on my path when running the term command to start a shell, this seems to work fine but doesn't help eshell find commands there.

Failing attempts and temporary workaround

You can see in the eshell output below that even though a command, lein, is available on the path eshell recognizes eshell doesn't find the command. However if I create a symbolic link from a directory that is in eshells default path to a script in /opt/bin eshell is then able to find it.

Eshell output

~ $ which lein
which: no lein in (/opt/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/bin:)
~ $ l /opt/bin/ | grep lein
-rwxr-xr-x   1 kevin          kevin    12538 2019-01-17 07:32 lein
~ $ sudo ln -s /opt/bin/lein /usr/local/bin/lein
[sudo] password for kevin: 
~ $ 
~ $ which lein
/usr/local/bin/lein

I would prefer not to have to create symbolic links in /usr/local/bin/ just so that eshell can find scripts in my /opt/bin. Note even after restarting emacs it finds the symbolic link not the script in /opt/bin. This is occurring in a GUI instance of emacs-25 on linux mint debian (v9.3) edition.

Question:

How do I get eshell to actually check eshell path instead of the some default list of directories? Should I be updating a different path variable?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1022

Answers (2)

Elijah Beale
Elijah Beale

Reputation: 1

One way:

Assuming you are running emacs in a terminal emulator or tty; then you can just add /opt/bin to your $PATH. Eshell uses your $PATH to find external commands. Not sure how it works for GTK version.

Upvotes: 0

jpkotta
jpkotta

Reputation: 9417

Looking at the source of eshell/addpath, it uses setq on eshell-path-env, which is a buffer local var. This means that if you use eshell/addpath, it has to be executed in the context of each eshell buffer. The best way to do this is to use a mode hook.

(defun jpk/eshell-mode-hook ()
  (eshell/addpath "/opt/bin"))
(add-hook 'eshell-mode-hook #'jpk/eshell-mode-hook)

I'm not super familiar with Eshell, so I'm not going to say this is the best way, but it should work. eshell-path-env is set from (getenv "PATH") initially, so it's weird that setting PATH env var doesn't work (unless you're doing that after loading eshell).

Upvotes: 1

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