I have a few Ubuntu build servers, since it lets us run MS-SQL and PG-SQL on the same bow, even though our supported OS is Debian this is good for our development systems. I do have some Debian build servers as well for the compiled artifacts rather than jars.
On my Debian system I use the following pattern to append the PATH with things, but on the ubuntu system the PATH is NOT being appended with the THING:
#!/bin/shexport THING=/path/to/thingexport PATH=$PATH:$THING