Homebrew-installed packages cannot be called from Obsidian

Bug graveyard
,
1

Steps to reproduce

  1. Install any third-party plugin that executes system commands from Obsidian (e.g., Templater or Obsidian Git)
  2. Try to execute code that uses a package that was installed via Homebrew (e.g., writing a user function in Templater or using git-lfs with Obsidian Git)
  3. Obsidian will not be able to find the package, and will throw an error.

Expected result

I expect to successfully run the system commands using the packages I downloaded with Homebrew.

Actual result

With both Templater and Obsidian, I get the error command not found or PACKAGE not found where PACKAGE is whatever I was trying to use (git-lfs, fx, tldr, anything I installed with Homebrew).

This error occurred on both the main Obsidian version and the Insider version.

Environment

  • Operating system: MacOS Monterrey
  • Debug info:
    SYSTEM INFO:
    Obsidian version: v0.13.21
    Installer version: v0.12.15
    Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 21.2.0: Sun Nov 28 20:28:54 PST 2021; root:xnu-8019.61.5~1/RELEASE_X86_64 21.2.0
    Login status: logged in
    Catalyst license: supporter
    Insider build toggle: on
    Live preview: on
    Legacy editor: off
    Base theme: dark
    Community theme: Minimal
    Snippets enabled: 5
    Safe mode: off
    Plugins installed: 18
    Plugins enabled: 17
    1: Hider
    2: Find unlinked files and unresolved links
    3: Tag Wrangler
    4: Calendar
    5: Dataview
    6: Periodic Notes
    7: Templater
    8: Style Settings
    9: Tag Page Preview
    10: Sliding Panes (Andy’s Mode)
    11: TagFolder
    12: Contextual Typography
    13: Metadata Extractor
    14: Advanced URI
    15: Obsidian Git
    16: Advanced Tables
    17: Tasks

Additional information

This has been discussed on Obsidian Git’s issue page, and I also opened an issue with Templater.

My guess is that it’s the same underlying problem that Obsidian does not include /usr/local/bin on the path when it executes code, and, when Homebrew installs packages, it places the symlinks to those packages in /usr/local/bin.

There was also an old forum post describing this problem that is now locked and wasn’t resolved.

Work-Arounds

For Obsidian Git, I followed the steps discussed in that issue and added PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin to the top of all of the hooks added by git-lfs. I also updated my global .gitconfig to refer to /usr/local/bin/git-lfs instead of just git-lfs. With those changes, I was able to use Git LFS with Obsidian Git.

For Templater, I defined my functions as bash scripts, and I included PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin at the top of each script. From there, I was able to write a user-defined function in Templater to run my bash script successfully.

2

I had a lot of other plugins enabled in the original post, so I retested with everything turned off. The issues do persist when I only have Templater and Obsidian Git enabled and when I only have one of them enabled.

Updated Debug Info:

SYSTEM INFO:
	Obsidian version: v0.13.21
	Installer version: v0.12.15
	Operating system: Darwin Kernel Version 21.2.0: Sun Nov 28 20:28:54 PST 2021; root:xnu-8019.61.5~1/RELEASE_X86_64 21.2.0
	Login status: logged in
	Catalyst license: supporter
	Insider build toggle: on
	Live preview: on
	Legacy editor: off
	Base theme: dark
	Community theme: none
	Snippets enabled: 0
	Safe mode: off
	Plugins installed: 18
	Plugins enabled: 2
		1: Obsidian Git
		2: Templater
3

I don’t consider this a bug and I am not sure if we should do the legwork for people who use homebrew. Please, open a FR for requesting this.

4

That’s a good point! After thinking about it more, I don’t even think it really needs a feature request. It was fairly simple to work around on my own, and I think it would probably add unnecessary complication for most users.