1. Why Doesn It Work For Macmillan

I guess this Q&A should go to Superuser, but anyway: According to the section INVOCATION of the,. /etc/profile and /.profile is read for an interactive login shell, and. /.bashrc is read for an interactive non-login shell. If your other UNIX machine automatically read /.bashrc even for an interactive login shell, that's because the system-wide /etc/ profile has a line which reads /.bashrc. OS X's system-wide /etc/profile doesn't have one. So, if you want to run /.bashrc even for an interactive login shell, you need to include a line. /.bashrc in your /.profile.

Good information above, but thought I'd share some specifics on the problem I had and the solution I found. The need: Add a directory to PATH on OSX 10.8 (ML). The problem: Guidance is often 'mod the.profile in your home directory'. A bit confusing since, by default, this file doesn't exist on OSX. Doubly confusing because once you add an export statement to append the new directory to the existing PATH. It doesn't work. Covered above.

The solution: I added the export statement to my.bashprofile (also in the home directory). I'm sure there are many ways to skin this cat.

Why Doesn It Work For Macmillan

This one worked for me. Somewhat confidence inspiring: the.bashprofile already existed and I could see that other installed software (e.g. Ruby) had modified it. If there's a better solution I'll be glad to hear about it!