title: How change the home folder of an installation using enviromental variables?
body: <p>I am trying to install a program called Apache Airflow. </p>
  
  <p>The instructions show how to specify a home folder</p>
  
  <pre><code># airflow needs a home, ~/airflow is the default,
  # but you can lay foundation somewhere else if you prefer
  # (optional)
  export AIRFLOW_HOME=~/airflow
  
  # install from pypi using pip
  pip install apache-airflow
  
  # initialize the database
  airflow initdb
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><a href="https://airflow.apache.org/docs/stable/start.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://airflow.apache.org/docs/stable/start.html</a></p>
  
  <p>I am working in Google Colab, and I want the folder to be in the home directory, which is <code>/content</code> . However, no matter what I specify for <code>export AIRFLOW_HOME=</code> , the home folder is always set in <code>/root</code>. </p>
  
  <p>What I have tried so far</p>
  
  <pre><code>export AIRFLOW_HOME=~content
  
  export AIRFLOW_HOME=~content/
  
  export AIRFLOW_HOME=~/content
  
  export AIRFLOW_HOME=~/content/airflow
  
  export AIRFLOW_HOME=~/content/airflow/
  
  export AIRFLOW_HOME='pwd' 
  
  export AIRFLOW_HOME='pwd' /content/
  
  export AIRFLOW_HOME='pwd' /content
  
  export AIRFLOW_HOME='pwd' content/
  
  export AIRFLOW_HOME='pwd' content
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>For convenience, here's a colab notebook of the code for easy tinker </p>
  
  <p><a href="https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1lV-D60qEJN2F4azUYTDVeUCKv6qTyzL3" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1lV-D60qEJN2F4azUYTDVeUCKv6qTyzL3</a></p>