Adding new commands

Question

I have added some new commands to ~/.bash_profile but every time I start a new terminal session, it seems to forget these commands and I have to do . ~/.bash_profile again. Is there a way to avoid this doing every single terminal session?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I don't know why ~/.bash_profile is getting overwritten, but I've had problems with it before too. Instead, use ~/.bashrc.

What I do is create the file ~/.bashrc2. In that file I put all my custom commands. After you have what you want, edit ~/.bashrc and add this line at the bottom:

. ~/.bashrc2

Even if ~/.bashrc gets modified, it won't hurt your customizations. Now you have a portable customization file that you can take to any computer.