Environment variables in Fish

Question

I need to use a program called Kpax, the "installation" process consist in this:

(for bash users, edit ~/.bashrc)
   export KPAX_ROOT=/home/dritchie/kpax       <-  substitute the proper pathname here.

   export PATH=${PATH}:${KPAX_ROOT}/bin

I'm using Garuda with fish shell, if I run Kpax using bash works great, the problem is that I need to run Kpax from a php file and every time I use shell_exec() this appear in the error_log:

kpax: command not found

Is there a way to replicate the thing with the environment variables in fish as in bash?

Answer 1

In fish shell 3.2 or later, you can just run:

fish_add_path /home/dritchie/kpax/bin

substituting in your home directory.

You can run this once at the command line, or add it to ~/.config/fish/config.fish; either way it will be remembered. Here's documentation for fish_add_path.

You might still need the KPAX_ROOT environment variable, however, so you might still need to set -U that one.

Answer 2

According to https://fishshell.com/docs/current/cmds/set.html?highlight=environment

You'll need to use the set command to set the variables and explicitly export them.

According to https://fishshell.com/docs/current/tutorial.html?highlight=configuration (search deep in the document for "Startup (where's .bashrc)" the file you need to edit is ~/.config/fish/config.fish)

So putting those two together, add the following to the end of your existing ~/.config/fish/config.fish (or just create a file containing only the following if that doesn't already exist):

set -gx KPAX_ROOT <your path to KPAX installation>
set -gx PATH $PATH "$KPAX_ROOT"/bin

Alternatively, it might be even easier to just create the needed variables as "Universal":

set -U KPAX_ROOT <path to KPAX installation>
set -U PATH $PATH "$KPAX_ROOT"/bin

(You should only have to execute this once and it should update fish for eternity on your behalf according to the documentation).

I don't have and haven't used fish, but hopefully these references to the fish manual and the suggestions I provide will get you where you need.