exec-path question

[Ben Key]

Hello,

I have a question about the exec-path variable.  I am using the Nextstep build of Emacs on Mac OS X 10.6.6.  In both Emacs 23.2 and Emacs 24.0, the "/usr/local/bin" directory is not included in the list, even though it is included in my PATH environment variable.  In Emacs 23.2, the exec-path variable has the value ("/usr/bin" "/bin" "/usr/sbin" "/sbin" "/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin").  In Emacs 24, the exec-path variable has the value ("/usr/bin" "/bin" "/usr/sbin" "/sbin" "/Applications/Emacs24.app/Contents/MacOS/bin").  In Emacs 24 the following additional information is provided.

Original value was ("/usr/bin" "/bin" "/usr/sbin" "/sbin" "/usr/local/bin" "/usr/X11/bin" "/Users/bkey/src/emacs/trunk/lib-src" "/Users/bkey/src/emacs/trunk/nextstep/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS//libexec/emacs/24.0.50/x86_64-apple-darwin10.6.0")

It looks like, at least in Emacs 24, the "/usr/local/bin" directory is initially included in the exec-path but is latter removed for some reason.


In both versions of Emacs, the  "/usr/local/bin" directory is included in the path if I run Emacs from the command line using the full path to the Emacs executable.  It is also included in the path if am debugging Emacs using GDB so I at a loss as to how best to discover the cause of the problem.  I only get the problem if I start Emacs using the icon in the Applications menu, which is my preferred method of starting Emacs.

I need the "/usr/local/bin" directory to be included in my exec-path because I wish to use the ispell function and my hunspell executable is located there.  I know I can simply modify my .emacs file to add the "/usr/local/bin" directory to the exec-path, but I should not have to do that.  Emacs should not be removing this directory from the exec-path.

Does anyone have any idea how I should go about tracking down the cause of this problem?