The PATH in Suse Linux 9 (/etc/profile.local)

Several software installations modify the PATH environment variable. There are many different file that are read during bootup that contribute to the final PATH variable. Several software installs, however, break exisiting PATH entries. Among them is the Staden package. The staden installation instruction advise to include the following lines in ~/.bashrc:

export STADENROOT=/usr/local/staden-linux-rel-1-4 . $STADENROOT/staden.profile

In order to quickfix PATH problems, you can give the full path that you need in /etc/profile.local:

PATH=/home/jeltsch/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin/:/sbin:/opt/gnome/bin:/opt/kde3/bin:/usr/lib/java/bin:/usr/local/bio/bin/

If you leave the entry in ~/.bashrc, the staden path will be inserted before all the entries in /etc/profile.local, thus will take precedence over other entries. This breaks certain programs as some of the libraries Staden uses are older than the ones on Suse Linux 9 (see some older posting).