How to reload bashrc settings without logging out and back in again

Question

If I make changes to  bashrc  how do I reload it without logging out and back in

User · Accepted Answer

You can enter the long form command  source    bashrc  or you can use the shorter version of the command       bashrc

User · Answer

Depending on your environment  just typing  bash   may also work

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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    Except for the modifications that reloading    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     In other words  Any ad-hoc changes to the current shell in terms of shell variables  shell functions  shell options  command history are lost     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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

type    source    bashrc  or  in shorter form        bashrc

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

TLDR       bashrc is merging new and old  bashrc together  exec bash is only use new  bashrc  See which one meets your need

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

bashrc        is a POSIX-mandated builtin     Alternatives  source    bashrc      source is a synonym for dot period   in bash  but not in POSIX sh  so for maximum compatibility use the period    exec bash         exec command replaces the shell with a given program        WhoSayIn

User · Answer

Someone edited my answer to add incorrect English  but here was the original  which is inferior to the accepted answer      bashrc

User · Answer

With this  you won t even have to type  source    bashrc    Include your bashrc file   alias rc  vim    bashrc  amp  amp  source    bashrc    Every time you want to edit your bashrc  just run the alias  rc

User · Answer

i use the following command on msysgit        bashrc   shorter version of   source    bashrc

User · Answer

i personally have  alias     source    bashrc   in my bashrc  so that i can just use      to reload it

User · Answer

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  amp  amp  exec bash -l

User · Answer

This will also work    cd   source  bashrc

User · Answer

For me what works when I change the PATH is  exec   BASH  --login

[bash] How to reload .bashrc settings without logging out and back in again?

Examples related to bash

Examples related to shell

Examples related to terminal

Examples related to reload

Examples related to profile