Multiple times when I change the path on Windows, via the ‘Environment Settings’ dialog, those changes don’t apply.
Even when I reopen the command prompt, the settings don’t seem to be there.
So, either I would log out of Windows completely and log back in or do a system restart. This was a big pain and God knows how much time I’ve wasted with this!
Recently, I got tired of this and decided to dig in a bit deeper and finally found the answer!
Searching around I finally found a StackOverflow answer –
When you start a new process (such as a new command line), it will pick up the environment variables from the process that is starting it. When the path is updated, only the process performing the update can know it has changed, and the setting doesn’t propagate until you log back on (for per-user settings) or reboot (for system-wide settings)
Essentially, since I was starting my terminal using keyboard shortcut app, which starts at boot time, the environment variables picked up by that app are never refreshed.
Once I restarted that application, it picked up the updated system environment correctly. Now, when I reopen the terminal again, I see the system variables applied!
Really don’t want to think about how much time I’ve wasted in my life not knowing this!