How to define the PATH of Xquartz?

Question

The PATH predefined within Xquartz is:<pre>
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/X11R6/bin
</pre>
How may I change it?
dan

Answer 1

If you use the strings command, you will see that it
is hard-coded into the binary:
<pre>
% strings /usr/X11R6/bin/Xquartz | grep /bin
%s:/usr/X11R6/bin
/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin
/bin/bash
</pre>
So you would have to get Apple to give you the
proprietary source code, change the code, and
recompile Xquartz.
Not necessary! Your strings gave me the clue.
The above:<pre>
/bin/bash
</pre>
is the shell that Xquartz will execve to start
any command entered within the Applications menu.
In your shell you are always free to redefine the
PATH in whatever way suits you. So for example, in
bash, you could have this:
<pre>
PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:~/bi
n:/usrX11R6/bin:.
export PATH
</pre>
in your .bashrc or .bash_profile or whatever it is
called.
For this to work generally from Xquartz, I had to define
the wanted PATH within .bashrc (because
Xquartz does fork a shell which isn't a login shell).
Thank you for this precious and efficient information.
dan