pathmod

Introduction

pathmod is a CLI program which allows you to easily modify the PATH using the terminal on Windows. pathmod can persistently modify the PATH, and provides an easy way to refresh the path in the current session.

Requirements

You need to have Python 3.6 or higher installed. This will allow you to install pathmod with Python's package manager, pip.

How to install

To install pathmod with pip:

pip install pathmod

After this command completes, the pathmod executable should be available on the PATH.

Quick start

User vs system PATHs

By default, pathmod modifies the user PATH, which does not require elevated permissions. You can use the -s/--system flag to modify the system PATH instead.

Add

add is used to add an item to the PATH.

You can use relative paths, and paths using tilde (~):

# Add the current working directory to the PATH.
>> pathmod add .

# Add 'C:\Users\%USERNAME%\scripts' to the PATH.
>> pathmod add ~/scripts

Absolute file paths are also valid:

>> pathmod add "C:\Program Files\my program"

Prepend

prepend is used to prepend an item to the PATH. THis may be useful if you require items in your newly added location to be prioritised over items of the same name in other locations.

>> pathmod prepend . 

Remove

pathmod remove is used to remove an item from the PATH.

>> pathmod remove .

As with add and prepend, this defaults to modifying the user PATH. To remove an item from the system PATH, ensure you use the -s/--system flag:

>> pathmod remove . -s

Show

show is used to show the items currently on the user and system PATHS. This prints the persistent values - the values which will be present in a new session - rather than the values in the current session.

>> pathmod show

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Path            Location
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[user]          'C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\Scripts\'
[user]          'C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\'
...

[system]        'C:\Windows\system32'
[system]        'C:\Windows'
...

Refresh

refresh allows you to update the PATH in the current session. This is especially useful in terminals such as the Windows Terminal, where you would need to open a new terminal instance and be unable to migrate your tabs.

Updating the PATH directly from pathmod is not possible because pathmod cannot modify the environment of its parent process; however, a relatively easy workaround is to run the command:

Invoke-Expression $(pathmod refresh -gq)

This will update the PATH in your current session so that it is equivalent to the PATH which would be used in a new session.

Help

You can use the --help flag to show help info. This also works for subcommands.

License

You may freely use, modify and redistribute this program under the terms of the MIT License. See LICENSE.