Path environment not set correctly when running from within a Mac OSX .app bundle. about writetex HOT 5 CLOSED

@jamiek Thanks for the information provided. You are absolutely right. Previously, I simply symbol link all the required programs to Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/bin.

App launching from .app bundle does not use the same shell as Terminal. In the case where default shell for user is bash, the variable may be set in .bash_profile and several other places. I do not know whether there is a proper way to set the shell used to launch .app bundle, or to load user's PATH settings of the default shell used in Terminal. Any idea?

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@wanglongqi I've done some digging and have some more info.

So when launched from the Finder by double clicking an .app bundle the path is set by launchd which has the default PATH of /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin apprently prepended by predefined locations inside the bundle (e.g. /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/MacOS:/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/MacOS/../Resources/bin)

launchctl can be used to modify the default PATH, but note that this updates the PATH for ALL apps launched via the finder.
sudo launchctl config user path /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/Library/TeX/texbin
followed by a reboot has added the locations of pdflatex and pdf2svg to the PATH seen by processes spawned by inkscape. The extension runs fine after doing this and is indeed seeing the updated PATH /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/MacOS:/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/MacOS/../Resources/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/Library/TeX/texbin

I will caution that the launchctl command above will overwrite any previously set custom PATH for launchd. This can be addressed by using launchctl getenv PATH to get the existing path and then append the locations for pdflatex etc.

This seems like a reasonable solution but my only hesitation is that it affects all apps launched via the finder. That said, these apps tend to look inside the .app bundle first so this should't risk breaking things.

An alternative might be to try to use python to set the appropriate PATH using os.environ and try to read the path from the "usual" locations, or read from a writeTex configuration file.

One other possibility is to modify the info.plist file in the .app bundle to include the updated PATH. i've tested this and it works, but requires a restart.

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Maybe another way is to add a text field for user to set additional search paths. Inkscape will remember the field value used for last run, so user also only need to set that field once.

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User configurable text fields sounds like a clean way to handle it. Especially if you could put the config settings on a separate tab. It would keep the UI looking clean.

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I tried to add a settings tab in this commit 85458b1, when have time please help do some tests.

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