My ~/.zprofile (paths, configuration and env variables)

Question

This is my .zprofile, it recently got nuked so I remade it. I made it clearer and better then my previous .zprofile and then I heard about this site so I want to know how can I improve this code.

# Setting PATH for Python 3.11
export PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/bin:$PATH"
alias python=python3

export PYTHONPATH="/Users/jfami/Desktop:/Users/jfami/Desktop.noml:$PYTHONPATH"

# Setting PATH for Demonal
export PATH="/Users/jfami/Library/Demonal/bin:$PATH"

# Setting PATH for Sublime Text
export PATH="/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin:$PATH"

# Moving to a better directory
cd Desktop

# Aliases!
alias noml="python ~/Desktop/noml/app.py"
alias deppy="python ~/Desktop/deppy.py"
alias pylect="python ~/pylect/pylect-env/.pylect.py"

# ENV variables
export MYSQL_PASSWORD=$(cat MYSQL_PASSWORD)

# Configuration

termdx tebwhite > /dev/null 2>&1
termdx tefblack > /dev/null 2>&1
deppy cache-clear
demonal project select playground

# Print the art
echo -e "\e[0;35m<------------------------------------> \e[0m"
echo -e "\e[0;35mThe Terminal \e[0m"
echo -e "\e[0;35m<------------------------------------> \e[0m"
echo -e "\e[0;33mOS: $(uname)\e[0m"
echo -e "\e[0;36mUsername: $(whoami)\e[0m"
echo -e "\e[0;32mBrowser: $('/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome' --version)\e[0m"

Answer 1

Do you really want all Python programs to look first in these directories?

export PYTHONPATH="/Users/jfami/Desktop:/Users/jfami/Desktop.noml:$PYTHONPATH"

It might be appropriate to create very small shell scripts (which set the environment and exec the Python interpreter) for the few Python programs that actually use that path, and put them in $HOME/bin (or some other suitable place on your $PATH).

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Don't do this:

export MYSQL_PASSWORD=$(cat MYSQL_PASSWORD)

That's exposing your password in the environment variables of every process you run from this shell. It's all too easy to leak that information to untrusted programs or other users.

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You might think you only ever log in from one kind of terminal, but one day you'll find these hard-coded escape sequences a nuisance:

echo -e "\e[0;35m<------------------------------------> \e[0m"

Instead, use tput to generate the correct codes for your actual $TERM if they exist.

Answer 2

Looks pretty good.

• If /Users/jfami becomes $HOME, you can use it on other boxes and other users can use it too.
• You probably also want to set your MANPATH, and possibly INFOPATH. On the other hand, maybe you always look up the documentation online, and that’s just old-fashioned of me.
• If your system doesn’t by default, you might want to enable colors in ls, which on many distributions is the command given by dircolors --sh.
• Some of these commands might be better for .zshenv or .zshrc, particularly the aliases, which I don’t believe would get inherited otherwise.
• If you often log in remotely, you might want to override your LANG, LC_ALL or TZ, although your terminal program likely has an option to set these.

Your profile is also very close to Bourne Shell syntax, which would work under any shell if you renamed .zprofile to .profile. The only significant change you would need is to break up your EXPORT commands into two parts:

PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/bin:$PATH"; export PATH