Sublime Text 3 and Terminal prompt for OS X Mavericks?

MacosCommand LineTerminalSublimetext3

Macos Problem Overview


I'm trying to set-up Sublime Text 3 on OS X Mavericks and getting levels of frustration.

I've followed all of the usual suspects in regards to installation and setup, i.e. Googling the Sublime Text website, and Stack Overflow. Inevitably it's something minor I'm missing, but it's causing me major heartburn.

What I've done so far:

  1. Downloaded Sublime Text 3, sitting in my /Applications directory
  2. Followed the guide Launch Sublime Text 2 from Mac Terminal

The problems starts here. I know that the symlink presented in this link is using ST2, but I want to use "sublime" instead of the "subl"(personal preference). I searched around and found what I need to paste into Terminal for ST3:

ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" ~/usr/local/bin/sublime

3. Already had a ~/.bash_profile: export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH. However, when I echo $PATH I get:

    /usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

 Does this look correct?

4. Now when I type sublime into the terminal I get command not found

What am I missing. This is driving me crazy as I fell that I have followed all the steps, but ST3 is still not working for me

Macos Solutions


Solution 1 - Macos

Should be:

ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" /usr/local/bin/sublime

Notice I removed the tilde (~). Tilde (~) in Unix refers to your user's home directory, so your source was correct, but the second argument was placing the link in /Users/[your username]/usr/local/bin/ which is not included in $PATH.

In your note, you said you tried removing the quotes from the source argument. If you remove the quotes, you need to be sure to escape the space character as follows:

ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /usr/local/bin/sublime

That should work as well.

Solution 2 - Macos

Mavericks does not ship with a ~/bin directory, but found I ran into trouble trying to install the subl command in any of the low-level system bin directories. I found the following solution worked neatly:

Create a ~/bin directory for your user:

mkdir ~/bin

Add the subl command as per the Sublime Text documentation:

ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" ~/bin/subl

Open /etc/paths in your (second) favourite text editor:

sudo vi /etc/paths

Add the active user's ~/bin folder. Here's how mine looked after I'd added ~/bin:

~/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
/usr/local/bin

Solution 3 - Macos

Rather than having cumbersome sudo links to setup I prefer to use a simple bash function and use the native Mac open command:

#somewhere in your .bashrc or .zshrc
sublime () {
	open -a "Sublime Text" $@
}

Now all you have to do is sublime . whenever you want to open up sublime from a given folder. Obviously you can simply rename it subl.

Note The name to write in the -a parameter is the name of the application as stored in the the /Applications folder:

enter image description here

Solution 4 - Macos

After a few days of struggling with the issue, this worked for me.

Make sure you have ~/usr/bin set in $PATH

ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" /usr/bin/subl

If you get a permission denied error:

sudo ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" /usr/bin/subl

Type in your password.

Solution 5 - Macos

This works for me as well:

sudo ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" /usr/local/bin/st

Than you can write just:

st filename.file extension

It should works. I tried so many things but this worked first.

Solution 6 - Macos

The answers already given are all fine but what about making your life waaay easier and rely on good tools instead ;)

  1. Install 'Oh My ZSh' (imho: a must have) https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh
  2. Open the configuration file: ~/.zshrc
  3. Add sublime to the plugins: plugins=(sublime) (other recommendations: brew colored-man git osx)
  4. Open your terminal on steroids and type: st foo.txt
  5. Giggle in bliss and read the other cool stuff 'Oh My ZSh' can do for you!

Solution 7 - Macos

If you want to run Sublime from the terminal, append the following to your ~/.bash_profile file (~/.zshrc in case you use zsh).

subl () { open -n -b "com.sublimetext.3" --args $* ;}

Now, you can simply type subl . in any folder to start editing files in that folder.

Attributions

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Content TypeOriginal AuthorOriginal Content on Stackoverflow
QuestionZoopView Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - MacosMikeView Answer on Stackoverflow
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Solution 3 - MacosapoucheView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - MacosBebop_View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - MacosVitaliy RogozinView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - MacosLukas N.P. EggerView Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - MacosmrdedView Answer on Stackoverflow