Environment Variables

To help mitigate unintended side effects that may come from starting an interactive shell on behalf of users, Nova uses login shells instead when requesting environment variables.

As a result, variables that are only set by commands or scripts invoked in an interactive shell will not be reflected in Nova. This includes variable modifications made in interactive shell configuration files like .bashrc and .zshrc, which aren’t sourced by login shells.

To ensure that Nova reflects your desired environment variables, you can copy or move the relevant variable modification, command, or script invocation to a startup file that is sourced by a login shell:

  • ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, or ~/.profile for Bash
  • ~/.zprofile or ~/.zlogin for ZSH

This article was last updated on July 23, 2020