Setting PATH on ~.profile

adevlunix

As you probably know, some of what file is read depends on your shell type (login or interactive) as to which file is read.

Check the "Files" subheading on the bash man page: https://linux.die.net/man/1/bash

Another good reference: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/415403/whats-the-difference-between-bashrc-bash-profile-and-environment

Files

/bin/bash
The bash executable
/etc/profile
The systemwide initialization file, executed for login shells
/etc/bash.bash_logout
The systemwide login shell cleanup file, executed when a login shell exits
_{/.bash_profile}
The personal initialization file, executed for login shells
_/.bashrc
The individual per-interactive-shell startup file
_{/.bash_logout}
The individual login shell cleanup file, executed when a login shell exits
_/.inputrc
Individual readline initialization file

This post might help with setting your PATH environment variable: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/26059

Also, you can check /usr/share/defaults/etc/profile.d/10-path.sh. That is where the initial values are set. You could add in your systemwide override in /etc/profile.d or in your local ~/.profile or if just for bash in .bash_profile...

Why don't you set the PATH variable in the $HOME/.bashrc instead? You can always 'source' it if the login environment does not read the .bashrc.

adevlunix

Maybe the suggestion in this post would help as well: https://stackoverflow.com/a/415444

Also, on Solus, your .bash_profile probably already references and sources your .bashrc file. Here's what is in mine:

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
  . ~/.bashrc
fi

So if you have your PATH environment variable in .bashrc it should be picked up by either an interactive non-login shell directly from .bashrc or by a login shell by being sourced from .bash_profile. Of course all of this only works if you actually are using bash as your shell.

You can check your shell a few ways, here's some of the commands that can do it:

echo $0

echo $SHELL

ps -p $$ -o ucomm=

grep $(id -un) /etc/passwd|cut -d: -f7

If you are using a different shell, you'll have to check the documentation for that shell.

I also just came along the issue that I wanted to append the PATH and PYTHONPATH environment variables and tried to use .profile for it because this is usually recommended as the best place for shell independent stuff. On most other Linux systems it seems to be sources by all shell types including basic sh and bash.
But in Solus Linus the .profileis not sources for a GUI terminal session with bash as already mentioned in this thread.

What is also strange in my view is that the default ~/.bashrc and ~/.profile first source the system wide profile from /usr/share/defaults/etc/profile. In other systems this is not required as the system wide profile is always sourced before the local use .profile and/or .bashrc are executed.

One idea to make the behaviour more similar to other systems could be to source ~/.profile from ~/.bashrc instead of the system wide profile (which will still be sourced then via ~/.profile). In this way, the bash shell would essentially source the system profile, local .profile and finally the rest of .bashrc in correct sequence.

I found some interesting comments about compatibility with other shells than bash in this StackExchange post.

.bashrc

if [ -f "$HOME/.profile" ]; then
  source "$HOME/.profile"
else
  source /usr/share/defaults/etc/profile
fi

# ... remaining .bashrc

.profile

source /usr/share/defaults/etc/profile

# for example add something to the PATH
PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH; export PATH

# ... remaining .profile