How to load ~/.bash_profile when entering bash from within zsh?

Question

I've used bash for two years, and just tried to switch to zsh shell on my OS X via homebrew. And I set my default (login) shell to zsh, and I confirmed it's set properly by seeing that when I launch my Terminal, it's zsh shell that is used in default.

However, when I try to enter bash shell from within zsh, it looks like not loading ~/.bash_profile, since I cannot run my command using aliases, which is defined in my ~/.bash_profile like alias julia="~/juila/julia", etc.. Also, the prompt is not what I set in the file and instead return bash-3.2$.

For some reasons, when I set my login shell to bash, and enter zsh from within bash, then ~/.zshrc is loaded properly.

So why is it not loaded whenever I run bash from within zsh? My ~/.bash_profile is symbolic linked to ~/Dropbox/.bash_profile in order to sync it with my other computers. Maybe does it cause the issue?

Solution 1

An interactive bash reads your ~/.bash_profile if it's a login shell, or your ~/.bashrc if it's not a login shell.

A typical .bash_profile will contain something like:

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

so .bashrc can contain commands to be executed by either login or non-login shells.

If you run bash -l rather than just bash, it should read your .bash_profile.

Reference: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bash-Startup-Files.html

Solution 2

Open ~/.zshrc, and at the very bottom of the file, add the following:

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

Every time you open the terminal, it will load whatever is defined in ~/.bash_profile (if the file exist). With that, you can keep your custom settings for zsh (colors, and etc). And you get to keep your custom shell settings in .bash_profile file.

This is much cleaner than using bash -l IMO.

If you prefer putting your settings in .bashrc, or .bash_login, or .profile , you can do the same for them.

---

Similarly, you could also move the common profile settings to separate file, i.e. .my_common_profile, and add the following to both .bash_profile and .zshrc:

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

Solution 3

For those who have just installed zsh and want their alias from bash to work on zsh do the following

1. Open .zshrc file in vim like so

    vi ~/.zshrc
   

2. Scroll to the bottom

3. click "i" to enable write mode
4. Tell zsh to load items from bash_profile when needed like so

   source ~/.bash_profile
   

5. Write and quit like so

   :wq
   

6. Refresh your zsh like so

   source ~/.zshrc
   

   That's it. Now all your saved alias in .bash_profile will be ready to use in zsh.

Solution 4

To complement @Keith Thompson's excellent answer:

macOS:

As @chepner puts it succinctly (emphasis mine):

In OS X, bash is not used as part of the initial [at boot time] login process, and the Terminal.app (or other terminal emulators) process exists outside any pre-existing bash sessions, so each new window [or tab - read: interactive bash shell] (by default) treats itself as a new login session.

As a result, some OSX users only ever create ~/.bash_profile, and never bother with ~/.bashrc, because ALL interactive bash shells are login shells.

Linux:

On Linux, the situation is typically reversed: bash shells created interactively are [interactive] NON-login shells, so it is ~/.bashrc that matters.

As a result, many Linux users only ever deal with ~/.bashrc.

---

To maintain bash profiles that work on BOTH platforms, use the technique @Keith Thompson mentions:

• Put your definitions (aliases, functions, ...) in ~/.bashrc
• Add the following line to ~/.bash_profile

[[ -f ~/.bashrc ]] && . ~/.bashrc

Solution 5

Copy the contents from ~/.bash_profile and paste them at the bottom of ~/.zshrc file.

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Comments

[Will]

are your aliases available after your run source ~/.bash_profile?

[Blaszard]

Thanks. I defined the ~/.bashrc loading on the top of my ~/.bash_profile, but defined almost all settings, including aliases and environmental variables in my ~/.bash_profile, not ~/.bashrc. And I confirm that bash -l loads it successfully from within zsh.

[Blaszard]

Thanks for the excellent follow-up! How do you think about the idea that I only leave if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc; fi in my ~/.bash_profile, and move everything others to ~/.bashrc?

[mklement0]

@Gardecolo: I think that's a good idea (there's a largely hypothetical caveat: on platforms where a bash login session is created during boot - as stated, OSX is NOT one of them - you could argue that all export statements should go into ~/.bash_profile, because they only need to be executed once, and repeating them for every new bash shell is unnecessary - in practice, though, I doubt that it matters).

[gsscoder]

I don't know why oh-my-zsh updates, it removes every change to .zshrc.

[skiabox]

This works but it creates another bash shell inside zsh and you lose zsh functionality and colors.

[noun]

Instead of this, at the very bottom of ~/.zshrc file, add source ~/.bash_profile .