.bashrc .profile .bash_profile

[Brandon Allbery]

On Oct 1, 2009, at 17:41 , Scott Haneda wrote:
> I need to understand this once and for all, there is varying info on  
> this, the bash man page is verbose and not entirely clear.
>
>       When  bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a  
> non-inter-
>       active shell with the --login option, it first reads and  
> executes  com-
>       mands  from  the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.   
> After reading
>       that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and  
> ~/.profile,
>       in  that order, and reads and executes commands from the first  
> one that
>       exists and is readable.  The --noprofile option may be  used   
> when  the
>       shell is started to inhibit this behavior.
>
> This implies, that only one of those files is read.  That it stops  
> once it finds one.  I have:
> .bash_profile, .bashrc, and .profile

bash will read .bash_profile and .bashrc.

I would put bash-specific session-level information in .bash_profile,  
portable (to e.g. zsh) session-level information in .profile, and  
have .bash_profile source .profile.  Per-shell information should go  
in .bashrc.  But I've been doing this stuff for a while, and I can  
imagine people hndling single files better.  (I also use the same  
shell config files on every system I use, which is a rather wide array  
of operating systems and versions.)

Normally it is a good idea not to put environment settings, stty  
settings, etc. in .bashrc.

> I am pretty sure I need to stop using .bashrc, since that is for  
> interactive non login shells, which I am interpreting as shells that  
> do work that is not the result of me using the shell.

When you open a Terminal window, (by default) you get an interactive  
login shell.

If you type "bash" in that shell, you get an interactive non-login  
shell.

If you run vi and type ":!ls", vi will spawn a noninteractive shell to  
run "ls".  Noninteractive shells are also used by "make", "port", and  
numerous other commands.

> Sounds to me, like the correct course of action is to put my custom  
> shell aliases and settings

Shell aliases should be in .bashrc.

> This brings up a question, if the .bash* files do not cascade, and  
> stop after finding your local one, how is it that MacPorts suggests  
> to use .profile, as that will never get read?

MacPoerts assumes you don't use the shell-specific .bash_profile  
or .bash_login, or if you do you also "source .profile".  I would  
consider the latter a best practice.

> On a side note, I am doing this:
> export LSCOLORS=dxfxcxdxbxegedabagacad
> Which has never worked for me on a non darwin OS.

On many systems it's LS_COLORS, not LSCOLORS, and it has a different  
format.

>  Is that the wrong way to do it, are there more appropriate ways to  
> do coloring?  I think having this in .bashrc actually hurt me ones,  
> as MacPorts saw either:
> 	export CLICOLOR=1 or export CLICOLOR_FORCE=1

CLICOLOR_FORCE will probably cause scripts that use ls to break pretty  
badly.  MacPorts is itself implemented using scripts.

-- 
brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery at kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH



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