hello friends,

I am looking for a way to do what I described in the title. When running command command, I dont want to have to type SOME_ENV_VAR=value command every time, especially if there are multiple.

I am sure youre immediately thinking aliases. My issue with aliases is that if I do this for several programs, my .bashrc will get large and messy quickly. I would prefer a way to separate those by program or application, rather than put them all in one file.

Is there a clean way to do this?

  • nicoag328@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    You could source an aliases.sh file on your .bashrc where you define your aliases, so that they don’t fill up your bashrc.

    For example, in your bashrc:

    source ~/.aliases.sh

    This way you could also create a file with aliases per program.

    • treadful@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      FYI: $HOME/.bash_aliases is standard and most distros’ .bashrc will source that file by default.

    • Cyclohexane@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
      01·
      1 year ago

      That’s a good idea, but it only makes the problem a little better. I still wouldn’t want one large aliases.sh file with environment variables for every application I customized. Would rather have them separate somehow without gobbling up a file

  • treadful@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Is there some reason you just don’t export those env vars in $HOME/.bashrc or $HOME/.bash_profile?

    export SOME_ENV_VAR=value

    If it’s every time you run the command, seems like it should be set globally.

    • Cyclohexane@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Because it’s not as maintainable as separating them by application or some other separation. Would not want to fill up my bashrc with single-application specific code.

      • treadful@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        You could break it out into other files if you really got that much going on. But if you really have hundreds or more env vars, maybe you should re-think using env vars at all.

        Hard to give a rec without more detail, so I don’t really get it.

  • dlarge6510@lemm.eeEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Put your aliases in .bash_aliases

    Make sure your .bashrc sources .bash_aliases like this:

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

  • Andy@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    If you were using Zsh, one way you could do this is by autoloading function files from a folder in your fpath.

    Let’s say you’re using ~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions for your custom functions. To ensure that folder is an early part of your fpath, put something like this within your .zshrc:

    typeset -U fpath=(~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions $fpath)

    Then let’s say you want to override the uptime command. Add a file ~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions/uptime with content like:

    NO_COLOR=1 =uptime
    Explanation for the second =: 
     `=' expansion
     If  a word begins with an unquoted `=' and the EQUALS option is set, the remainder of the word is taken as the name of a command.  If a command ex‐
     ists by that name, the word is replaced by the full pathname of the command.

    The last thing you need to do is mark it for autoloading, in your .zshrc:

    autoload -Uz uptime

    Instead of listing those functions manually as arguments, you could instead use a glob pattern to collect all those names, excluding any which begin with _ (completion functions):

    autoload -Uz ~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions/[^_]*(:t)
  • Kajika@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    You can add a new executable in your ~/.local/bin directory like command_custom that would start SOME_ENV_VAR=value command. Like if you use bash:

    #!/usr/bin/bash

SOME_ENV_VAR=value command

    Do not forget to chmod +x the file to make it executable.

    This way you will have additional command for your user only (no sudo require to create/update those), for system-wise command put it in /usr/local/bin.