i personally have
alias ..='source ~/.bashrc'
in my bashrc, so that i can just use ".." to reload it.
. ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
exec bash
exec
command replaces the shell with a given program... – WhoSayIn
For me what works when I change the PATH is: exec "$BASH" --login
Depending on your environment, just typing
bash
may also work.
exec bash is a great way to re-execute and launch a new shell to replace current. just to add to the answer, $SHELL returns the current shell which is bash. By using the following, it will reload the current shell, and not only to bash.
exec $SHELL -l;
This will also work..
cd ~
source .bashrc
Assuming an interactive shell, and you'd like to keep your current command history and also load /etc/profile (which loads environment data including /etc/bashrc and on Mac OS X loads paths defined in /etc/paths.d/ via path_helper), append your command history and do an exec of bash with the login ('-l') option:
history -a && exec bash -l
type:
source ~/.bashrc
or, in shorter form:
. ~/.bashrc
I noticed that pure exec bash
command will preserve the environment variables, so you need to use exec -c bash
to run bash in an empty environment.
For example, you login a bash, and export A=1
, if you exec bash
, the A == 1
.
If you exec -cl bash
, A
is empty.
I think this is the best way to do your job.
With this, you won't even have to type "source ~/.bashrc":
Include your bashrc file:
alias rc="vim ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc"
Every time you want to edit your bashrc, just run the alias "rc"
To complement and contrast the two most popular answers, . ~/.bashrc
and exec bash
:
Both solutions effectively reload ~/.bashrc
, but there are differences:
. ~/.bashrc
or source ~/.bashrc
will preserve your current shell:
~/.bashrc
into the current shell (sourcing) makes, the current shell and its state are preserved, which includes environment variables, shell variables, shell options, shell functions, and command history.exec bash
, or, more robustly, exec "$BASH"
[1],
will replace your current shell with a new instance, and therefore only preserve your current shell's environment variables (including ones you've defined ad-hoc).
Depending on your needs, one or the other approach may be preferred.
[1] exec bash
could in theory execute a different bash
executable than the one that started the current shell, if it happens to exist in a directory listed earlier in the $PATH
. Since special variable $BASH
always contains the full path of the executable that started the current shell, exec "$BASH"
is guaranteed to use the same executable.
A note re "..."
around $BASH
: double-quoting ensures that the variable value is used as-is, without interpretation by Bash; if the value has no embedded spaces or other shell metacharacters (which is not likely in this case), you don't strictly need double quotes, but using them is a good habit to form.
I used easyengine to set up my vultr cloud based server.
I found my bash file at /etc/bash.bashrc
.
So source /etc/bash.bashrc
did the trick for me!
update
When setting up a bare server (ubuntu 16.04), you can use the above info, when you have not yet set up a username, and are logging in via root.
It's best to create a user (with sudo privledges), and login as this username instead.
This will create a directory for your settings, including .profile and .bashrc files.
https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-create-a-sudo-user-on-ubuntu/
Now, you will edit and (and "source") the ~/.bashrc
file.
On my server, this was located at /home/your_username/.bashrc
(where your_username
is actually the new username you created above, and now login with)
TLDR:
. ~/.bashrc
is merging new and old .bashrc
together.
exec bash
is only use new .bashrc
.
See which one meets your need.
i use the following command on msysgit
. ~/.bashrc
shorter version of
source ~/.bashrc
Or you could use:
exec bash
This does the same thing, and is easier to remember (at least for me).
The exec
command completely replaces the shell process by running the specified command-line. In our example, it replaces whatever the current shell is with a fresh instance of bash
(with the updated configuration files).
Someone edited my answer to add incorrect English, but here was the original, which is inferior to the accepted answer.
. .bashrc
Depending upon your environment, you may want to add scripting to have .bashrc load automatically when you open an SSH session. I recently did a migration to a server running Ubuntu, and there, .profile, not .bashrc or .bash_profile is loaded by default. To run any scripts in .bashrc, I had to run source ~/.bashrc
every time a session was opened, which doesn't help when running remote deploys.
To have your .bashrc load automatically when opening a session, try adding this to .profile:
if [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ]; then
# include .bashrc if it exists
if [ -f "$HOME/.bashrc" ]; then
. "$HOME/.bashrc"
fi
fi
Reopen your session, and it should load any paths/scripts you have in .bashrc.
Source: Stackoverflow.com