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I need a bash script that does the following:

  1. open a new terminal
  2. change to a specific directory
  3. run a command in that directory
  4. keep the terminal open for further use

Specifically I want to:

  1. open the konsole terminal
  2. change to /my/work/dir/
  3. inside /my/work/dir/, run source bin/activate
  4. after that I need to run further commands inside /my/work/dir/, e.g. ls

A very similar question was given the following answer for the script (adapted to my requirements):

#!/usr/bin/env bash
konsole --noclose --workdir /my/work/dir/ -e 'bash -c 'source bin/activate''

This does open a new terminal inside /my/work/dir/, but the terminal is not interactive. The

user@userMachine: /my/work/dir$

is missing that allows me to run further commands and anything I type (e.g. pwd) returns nothing, just new lines.

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1
  • Shells like bash have the concept of rcfiles, which are essentially sourced at the start of the shell session. Could you accomplish what you want by defining a custom rcfile and creating a konsole profile that triggers the shell with that rcfile?
    – kojiro
    Feb 13, 2020 at 23:17

2 Answers 2

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7

You need to specify what the terminal to do after executing the command source bin/activate. You want an active bash session so you need to run bash. In addition there is a mes with the quotes. So the script could be:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
konsole --noclose --workdir /my/work/dir/ -e 'bash -c "source bin/activate; exec bash"' &

  • & at the end is added in order to keep the main terminal usable, in case you are executing that script from other terminal window.

  • the exec command could be omitted, and you can use only bash.

Here are few answers of similar questions, dedicated to gnome-terminal:

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6
  • Ok This shows some strange behaviour now: The terminal opens in the correct directory. Also the virtualenv seems to be running, since pip freeze gives only the packages installed in the virtualenv. But when I then try to $ deactivate i get deactivate: command not found. I then activate again (again pip freeze gives correct output), then deactivate, and now pip freeze STILL gives the environment packages, not the system wide packages as expected...
    – Douglas James Bock
    Feb 13, 2020 at 14:38
  • Hello, @DouglasJamesBock, I really do not have an idea how your environment is setup and what bin/activate actually does. Try to change the shebang of the script to #!/bin/bash and/or source also the $HOME/.bashrc file probably some paths are loaded by this file.
    – pa4080
    Feb 13, 2020 at 14:43
  • the source bin/activate activates the python virtual environment I previously created in my/work/dir. I have also tried your other suggestions without improvements. I can not even exit the terminal, I guess due to the --noclose. I'm starting to think that Konsole might be to limited for this.
    – Douglas James Bock
    Feb 13, 2020 at 15:02
  • @DouglasJamesBock: Please tray with some other terminal emulator, gnomen-terminal I would say - check the references given in the answer.
    – pa4080
    Feb 13, 2020 at 15:35
  • There is any difference if source bin/activate && exec bash is used instead of source bin/activate; exec bash ?
    – funder7
    Aug 7, 2022 at 17:13
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I am not able to comment, but from what I understand I may suggest

#!/bin/bash
cd /my/work/dir/
source bin/activate
konsole
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2
  • This would make the most sense to me! Set up the environment, then launch konsole with the environment set.
    – Cinderhaze
    Feb 13, 2020 at 18:55
  • This gives the same issues as my first comment under pa4080's answer.
    – Douglas James Bock
    Feb 13, 2020 at 20:08

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