Standalone installer ignores ZDOTDIR and leaves codex off PATH in new Zsh sessions

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
75/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
shell, zsh
Domain
developer-experience

Research direction

The profile selection logic is in scripts/install/install.sh around lines 576-593, where the installer picks the Zsh startup file it appends PATH to. Start there and change the choice to honor ZDOTDIR before falling back to HOME. Done means the reproduction in the issue prints the custom ZDOTDIR marker and finds codex in a fresh interactive zsh -ic session.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

bug CLI

With an exported ZDOTDIR, a successful standalone install adds its PATH block to ~/.zshrc. Linux Zsh reads $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc instead. The installer's instruction to open a new terminal and run codex then fails.

Steps to reproduce On Linux with Zsh, start in the Codex checkout. This uses a disposable home and starts with the installation directory off PATH.

installer="$PWD/scripts/install/install.sh"
d=$(mktemp -d)
mkdir -p "$d/home/.config/zsh"
printf 'export CUSTOM_ZSHRC_LOADED=yes\n' > "$d/home/.config/zsh/.zshrc"
env HOME="$d/home" ZDOTDIR="$d/home/.config/zsh" PATH=/usr/bin:/bin \
  SHELL=/bin/zsh CODEX_HOME="$d/codex-home" CODEX_INSTALL_DIR="$d/bin" \
  CODEX_NON_INTERACTIVE=1 sh "$installer"
env HOME="$d/home" ZDOTDIR="$d/home/.config/zsh" PATH=/usr/bin:/bin \
  /bin/zsh -ic 'echo "$CUSTOM_ZSHRC_LOADED"; command -v codex || echo missing'
test -x "$d/bin/codex"

Observed On Linux x86_64 with Zsh 5.9, the checkout's offline release fixture ran the installer at de83e7674a69b9ae18544dd1fbf53f31bfe8c640 to completion. It reported adding PATH to $HOME/.zshrc. A fresh interactive Zsh printed yes and missing, even though the installed executable existed.

Expected A new Zsh session that reads the user's configured startup directory should find the installed CLI.

Suggested fix Use ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME} when choosing the Zsh startup file. Exercise the startup-file selection with a real interactive Zsh and an exported nondefault ZDOTDIR. Profile selection

Dominant language
Rust
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