Gradle exec PATH in Android Studio doesn't match command line

Question

I'm running a Gradle script that needs to exec a few commands. (In my example, it's node.)

In my Terminal, node is on my PATH, so I can type node --version and it just works. My Gradle script works fine on the command line.

But when I try to run the Gradle build in Android Studio, it says:

> A problem occurred starting process 'command 'node''
Cause: error=2, No such file or directory

Unfortunately, the way this script runs on various machines, I can't be sure what the path to node will be; I need to use the PATH environment from the user's machine. (On macOS, node might be in /usr/local/bin or /opt/homebrew/bin or ~/n/bin or something else entirely.)

How do I make this work?

EDIT: To clarify, our developers will launch Android Studio via the OS launcher, e.g. by double-clicking it in Finder on macOS, or from the Start menu in Windows.

Answer 1

My hunch would be that the PATH in Android Studio depends on how Android Studio is started. If I start it from a Linux shell, then it uses the same PATH which is set in that shell. If you use an OS-specific launcher, then I suppose the PATH depends on what this launcher used – which may be different from the one that you set explicitly/implicitly for your shell (e.g., in a ~/.bashrc file).

I doubt that you can get this to work reliably without manually making sure on all user machines that the PATH is always set correctly for Android Studio – or that you manually make sure that all node installations end up on the “most system-wide” PATH that is available for each OS installation.