Adding a permanent value to $PATH on Raspbian

I am quite new to Linux so I'm sorry for my newbie question, but for about and hour now I'm trying to add Node.js to $PATH with no luck :(

I've used the following line to add Node

PATH=$PATH:node-v0.10.24-linux-arm-armv6j-vfp-hard/bin

it worked, but when I logged off the terminal and logged in again, the path disappeared.

Later I tried adding the same line to .profile , .logins.defs and .bashrc. All didn't work so I removed the line.

Please help me with this!


P.S , when I added the line to .profile I was able to call Node, but when I changed my directory in order to navigate to a Node project directory, I received the following error:

-bash: node-v0.10.24-linux-arm-armv6j-vfp-hard/bin/node: No such file or directory

You should add an absolute path, not a relative one. You added this to your path: node-v0.10.24-linux-arm-armv6j-vfp-hard/bin. That's a relative path, not an absolute one (absolute paths start with a /). You can change your line to:

PATH=$PATH:DIR/node-v0.10.24-linux-arm-armv6j-vfp-hard/bin

where DIR is the full path of the directory containing node-v0.10.24-linux-arm-armv6j-vfp-hard.

It's probably a good idea for you to read a bit on how this all works - it's not that complicated once you see it explained. See http://superuser.com/questions/238987/how-does-unix-search-for-executable-files for an example.