Re: Where is PATH stored these days ? Why isn't .bash_profile executed in F35 ?

[linux guy <linuxguy123@xxxxxxxxx>]

Comments below.  Thanks for such a comprehensive answer.

On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 3:13 PM Cameron Simpson <cs@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 11Jan2022 14:15, linux guy <linuxguy123@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>I'm trying to add a few directories to PATH in F35.  I'm embarrassed to
>admit it isn't going well.
>
>Where is PATH stored in F35 ?

In your processes' memory. Unhelpful. But it is _initialised_ by your
login sequence. Yes, being pedantic here.

Ha.

 

>When exactly does .bash_profile get executed ?

1: Is your shell bash? (My interactive shell is zsh, by contrast.)
Echoing $SHELL should confirm bash for you, or looking in /etc/passwd.

 

Yes, bash. 

 

2: .bash_profile (or .profile, if the former is missing) gets run by
_login_ shells.

Good to know.

On a text based terminal (eg the Linux console without a GUI), your
login runs a login shell.

In a GUI such as a desktop the situation is more complicated:

- the GUI startup does not automatically run a login shell (to some
  extend because interaction or mistakes can then easily break the GUI
  startup).

Interesting.

- when you start a terminal it may or may not run a login shell; this
  can be controlled with the settings for your terminal emulator. What
  are you using?

Konsole.  According to its settings, it runs /bin/bash when it starts up.

Shells usually have a login and nonlogin startup mode - for bash this
loosely means a login shell sources the .bash_profile (or.profile) on
startup, and nonlogin interactive shells source the .bashrc.

OK, so there is my issue.   ~/ does not have a .bashrc.   I has .bash_profile only.

 

The specifics vary for other shells (eg zsh) but the idea's the same. The
exact process for bash is explained in tedious details in "man bash".

RTFM !  RTFMP !  OK.

 

The basic idea is/was that you'd put expensive stuff which only needed
to happen once in the .bash_profile (setting $PATH, consulting some
summary information, etc) and interactive-useful stuff in your .bashrc
(setting interaction modes like command line editing, defining aliases,
etc).

Makes sense.

 

These days you can often get away with making every new terminal run a
login shell. Look into that setting first up - it is the easiest fix.

Doesn't appear to be editable in Konsole, though maybe I could specify it as a parameter to /bin/bash that gets executed at startup.  Haven't tried that yet.

 

I discourage you from polluting your .bashrc with complexity. Though a
lot of distros prepollute it for you (have a look at /etc/bashrc, often
a nightmare of complexity).

Mine is pretty clean.

 

Personally, I keep my environment setting stuff in a distinct script,
which I source from my .profile. Here's my .profile:

    #!/bin/sh
    umask 002
    [ -f $HOME/rc-local/profile ] && . $HOME/rc-local/profile
    : ${SHDIR:=$HOME/rc/shell}
    . $SHDIR/rigenv
    LUSER=$USER; export LUSER
    . $HOME/rc/shell/rc

Setting $PATH (and a billion other things) is done in the "rigenv"
script mentioned above.

OK.

Here is my .bashrc:

#########################################################################

# .bashrc

# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
       . /etc/bashrc
fi

# User specific environment
if ! [[ "$PATH" =~ "$HOME/.local/bin:$HOME/bin:" ]]
then
   PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi
export PATH

# Uncomment the following line if you don't like systemctl's auto-paging feature:
# export SYSTEMD_PAGER=

# User specific aliases and functions
if [ -d ~/.bashrc.d ]; then
       for rc in ~/.bashrc.d/*; do
               if [ -f "$rc" ]; then
                       . "$rc"
               fi
       done
fi

unset rc

#####################################################################################################

 

Here is my .bash_profile:

####################################################################################

# .bash_profile
# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
       . ~/.bashrc
fi
# User specific environment and startup programs

# empty right now.

#####################################################################################################

 

>How does one get the bash environment reloaded without logging out and
>logging in ?   $source <something> ?  $exec bash ?  ./bash ?

If your terminals run login shells, opening a new terminal will do. For
that terminal, of course.

Or you can source your .profile (or separate script):

    . ~/.bash_profile

Right.  This doesn't seem to be working for me.

>$env should include everything in .bash_profile, right ?

"env" shows the exported environment - that which is inherited by
subprocesses. Example:

    foo=bah
    PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH:/usr/local/bin
    export PATH

$PATH gets exports, $foo does not, so env will show $PATH and not $foo. 
But your local shell has $foo for whatever purpose.

Right.  I get that.

Note that _inherited_ variables are automatically reexported. Because if
this, good practice is to only export $UPPERCASE names, and to use
$lowercase names for unexprted variables. This is because only
discipline controls the use of this namespace. besides, it also makes it
obvious which variables you expect to be local and which exported.

Good tip.

 

>Why doesn't F35 have ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc and instead has
>~/.bash_profile ?  Does .bash_profile replace .bashrc and .profile ?  Would
>bash read .profile if I created one ?  If so, when ?

See "man bash". Bash uses .bash_profile for logins and .bashrc for
nonlogin interactive shells.

OK, this makes sense.

>What happened to .inputrc ?

The .inputrc is for controlling the readline library (used for
interaction in bash and various other things). Maybe the defaults are
considered nice enough - you can always add your own. Here's mine:

    set editing-mode emacs
    set blink-matching-paren on
    set completion-ignore-case on
    set completion-query-items 1024
    set disable-completion off
    set expand-tilde on
    set horizontal-scroll-mode off
    set mark-directories on
    set mark-symlinked-directories on
    set match-hidden-files off
    set page-completions on
    set print-completions-horizontally off
    set show-all-if-ambiguous on
    set visible-stats on
    Control-w:backward-kill-word

Thanks for the detailed answer.

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