Non-sudo alternative to /usr/local/bin for common scripts

Question

I'm used to putting common scripts in /usr/local/bin so that I can execute them from anywhere with the terminal.

For example, I make a shell script named 1, make it executable with chmod +x 1 and put it in /usr/local/bin, and inside the script I type #!/bin/sh on the first line, and then my commands. From there on, it's very conveniently usable and quick to execute by typing

1Enter

on the terminal, from inside any folder.

My problem is that I'm currently working on a computer where can't do sudo and I can't expect to get it either, so I can't place my script in /usr/local/bin.

What are my options? Is there another path with the same "run from anywhere" capability, which I can access without sudo, or another way to achieve something equivalent?

The accepted answer to this post says

For user-scoped scripts, use bin/ in your home directory.

Which I tried, but there is no bin folder in my home directory, and when I created one, I still could not run the script from anywhere else.

I'm running on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

Answer 1

What are my options? Is there another path with the same "run from anywhere" capability, which I can access without sudo, or another way to achieve something equivalent?

How to do it?

Create some dir in your home to hold your scripts normally named as bin as convention.

mkdir ~/bin

Now move your scripts to bin

mv somescript ~/bin

Now how to make it tun from everywhere?!

You have to add the bin to the PATH

open your .bashrc

gedit .bashrc

and add this line:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/username/bin

Don't forget to replace username with your User Name

Save and exit, then source the bashrc

source .bashrc

and now you are fine, you can run your script as you used to do! but you have to notice this is related to your user only.

Note: It's better to rename your scripts other than 1 ,2 since you may face some issues with that names

---

UPDATE:

You can do same just create the bin dir in your home then source ~/.profile instead of ~/.bashrc. Since adding the ~/bin to your PATH is already listed in .profile

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Answer 2

In addition to https://askubuntu.com/a/643030/218015 you might can also define an alias inside your .bashrc for small, often used tasks. E.g.

alias ll='ls -l'
alias ls='ls --color=auto'

will create you a "command" ll, which is doing ls -l and ls will be coloured after defining the alias. https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/alias is having some more examples and a howto for setting it up.

Answer 3

Try ~/.local/bin/.

(I acknowledge this answer isn't adding anything new but there's a short answer to this question that shouldn't require reading everything else.)

Answer 4

There really should be a per-user bin because it would be really helpful in multi user environments, where people are denied root privledges in order to make everyone more safe. Use the following in a bash script to automatically create it.

if [ ! -d "$HOME/.local/bin" ] ; then
  mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/bin"
  printf '\nexport "PATH=$PATH:'"$HOME"/.local/bin'"' >> "$HOME/.bashrc"
  # Change the PATH right now:
  PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin"
fi