Adding Lando to PATH

Lando should be added to your PATH environment variable when you install or update it. When an executable is in PATH you can invoke it by name instead of by its path as in this example:

# lando is in PATH
lando start

# lando is not in PATH
/my/weird/place/for/stuff/lando start

However, there are some situations where Lando may not be automatically added to PATH. For those situations you can use lando shellenv and do the below:

Checking if Lando is in PATH

The most straightforward way to check is to simply run lando from a terminal and see if it returns the lando command list.

You can also do things like:

sh

which lando

cmd.exe

where lando

powershell

Get-Command lando

If any of them fail or return nothing then congrats 🎉 because lando is not in your PATH! 😦

Adding Lando to PATH

To add lando to PATH you first need to figure out the absolute path to the Lando binary. For the purposes of this we will assume the user has directly downloaded the Lando CLI to a special directory they created called /all/my/bin.

Here are a few ways you can use lando shellenv to add lando to PATH. Note that because lando is not in PATH you must invoke it using its absolute path.

# print the shellenv i need so i can copy/paste it to the relevant rc file
/all/my/bin/lando shellenv

# have lando attempt to add the shellenv to a shell rc file it thinks make sense
/all/my/bin/lando shellenv --add

# have lando add the shellenv to a file you want
/all/my/bin/lando shellenv --add ~/.specialrc

# directly append the output of shellenv to a file
/all/my/bin/lando shellenv >> ~/.anotherrc

Note that after any of the above commands you must either directly source the shell rc file that was edited or open a new terminal for the changes to apply. An example for most macOS users would be something like

source ~/.zshrc

You can then verify all is good with:

lando shellenv --check

Caveats

cmd.exe

cmd.exe does not have an rc file or equivalent mechanism so if you run lando shellenv --add it will actually execute a setx behind the scenes to update your userspace PATH environment variable.

This means that the lando binary directory will be set in your registry and by extension available in all downstream shells.

powershell.exe

By default powershell restricts the execution of all scripts. This includes the rc file we generate for you.

If you are getting an ExecutionPolicy error when you launch powershell we recommend you make local script execution for yourself a bit more permissive with:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser

If you are unsure about this re: security then we recommend you read this.