CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashubuntuenvironment-variables
DavidKanes
DavidKanes

Reputation: 313

How to set up a running environment on Ubuntu?

I want to customize a command to set up running environment, but I'm having some issue here. For example, I can run:

envsetup

and it will run the following script to help set up the environment:

cd /opt/dir/set_up | source environment

I have tried to add the following code to my $HOME .bashrc file, but it's not working (Maybe I should add it to the .bashrc in my root dir?):

alias envsetup = 'cd /opt/dir/set_up | source environment'

Could anyone let me know what might be wrong here please?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 157

Answers (1)

lurker
lurker

Reputation: 58284

A couple of things:

  • The cd command changes directories and doesn't output anything to standard output (stdout). So there's no point in piping its output to another command with |. If you want to execute two commands in sequence, you can separate with ;.
  • When defining an alias you can't be too generous with spaces.

Here's an option, then, to do what I think you want:

alias envsetup='cd /opt/dir/set_up ; source environment'

Per additional desire expressed in the comment, if you want to come back to the original directory, you can do it this way:

alias envsetup='(cd /opt/dir/set_up ; source environment)'

This runs the commands in a subshell so your current shell setup is unchanged, including the current working directory.

Note that since this runs in a subshell, if source is intended to change the environment variables in a persistent way, then this will not work. You can, alternatively, try something like this:

alias envsetup='p=$(pwd) ; cd /opt/dir/set_up ; source environment ; cd $p'

This will run in the same shell. You can choose whatever name you wish for p.

Upvotes: 1

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