Setting LM_LICENSE_FILE Environment Variable for ENVI/IDL 4.8 on Pre-Lion MacOS

To set an environment variable for ENVI/IDL on a pre-Lion MacOS System, I would recommend using the environment.plist file. This persists through whatever shells you have installed as well as in X Windows (and therefore when you double-click the ENVI executable from the MacOS GUI). I did not find any correct documentation for doing this from ITT or NASA.

1. Install the software
3. Define the environment variable in the file ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist
----- Open the Terminal
----- You will probably have to create the directory ... mkdir ~/.MacOSX)
----- ... and the file vi ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist

Paste the following into vi in Insert mode (press i) and save (:x) ... if you have more than one environment variable, make sure to add another key/string pair ... make sure you subsistute PORT and HOST below

<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?--><!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?-->
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
   <key>LM_LICENSE_FILE</key>
   <string>PORT@HOST</string>
</dict>
</plist><plist version="1.0"><dict></dict>
</plist>

4. Close terminal

You should now be able to use ENVI/IDL.