I am already using a makefile, and I was hoping to be able to use it to store a few useful aliases that the user could then invoke. I know that I can make a bash file with the aliases already built in, so and run it with source, so I can do something like:
# File: aliases.sh
alias useful="command to run"
alias also-useful="another command -to run"
Then I can run this in the current terminal session with:
source ./aliases.sh
Using a Makefile
So I was hoping to achieve something similar with a makefile, I was hoping to have a simple aliases entry, so the user could just run:
make aliases
I prefer to avoid adding an extra file if this is at all possible, because I don't want to add extra files for such simple tasks. If you have any suggestions that would be better, I'd be open to hearing them too.
If what you're asking is for make aliases to create aliases that you can then invoke at your shell prompt, something like:
$ make aliases
$ useful
then that is impossible and the reason has nothing to do with make.
In a UNIX/POSIX system the process hierarchy is strict: a process starts one or more sub-processes, and each of those can start more, etc. So a login manager process starts your shell (or your window manager), your shell starts make, which is another process, and make will run another shell as a subprocess to run each recipe, and each shell will run programs like compilers, commands like rm which are also processes, etc.
It is a fundamental rule of all processes that they cannot modify the environment (memory) of their parents (and they can only modify the environment of their children before they are started). So, if you start a new shell and change your working directory then exit that shell, the parent's shell is not changed. If you set an environment variable in the child process, the variable is not set in the parent. Etc.
Shell aliases are part of a particular shell's memory. So a program you start cannot create aliases in its parent shell. It doesn't matter if that program is make or anything else.
That's why you have to use the special command source to load those into your shell: instead of running a new shell, the source command tells the current shell to run the commands in the script as if you'd typed them in at the command line... so no new process is created and the current shell's environment and memory is modified. If you ran your aliases file as a shell script, via aliases rather than source aliases, then a new shell would be created, the aliases would be defined, then the shell would exit and all the aliases would be gone again.
So, all that to say it's not possible for make to define aliases in the shell that invokes it: the operating system won't allow it.
Related
I want to run a couple of scripts on my docker-entrypoint.sh;
My question if whether it makes any difference and if it does, what is the recommended way of going about this, regarding the following options:
A.
${HOMEDIR}/myscript --param1 --param2
B.
bash -c "${HOMEDIR}/myscript --param1 --param2"
C.
source ${HOMEDIR}/myscript --param1 --param2
It actually depends on what you are doing and what are you trying to do.
${HOMEDIR}/myscript --param1 --param2
This one will execute the script. When the script is done, any changes that it made to the environment are discarded.
bash -c "${HOMEDIR}/myscript --param1 --param2"
Running bash -c "my command here" vs. just running my command here is primarily different in that the former starts a subshell and the latter runs the commands in the current shell.
There are a number of differences in the effects, however:
Changes to the environment made in the subshell cannot affect the
parent shell (current directory, values of environment variables,
function definitions, etc.)
Variables set in the parent shell that
has not been exported will be unavailable in the subshell.
Here is my reference since I did not know much about bash -c
source ${HOMEDIR}/myscript --param1 --param2
When you call source (or its alias .), you insert the script in the current bash process. So you could read variables set by the script.
When you call sh, you initiate a fork (sub-process) that runs a new session of /bin/sh, which is usually a symbolic link to bash. In this case, environment variables set by the sub-script would be dropped when the sub-script finishes.
Also here my reference.
TL;DR: If you do not want the bash to keep the changes you want with that scripts you will be running on, I recommend you to use (A). If you want the bash to keep the variables and changes, use (C). If you want to keep the changes and make the bash run the script on another bash, use (B) as I listed the differences between them.
I would like to be able to have a rule inside my makefile that a changes the stack size and that appends to LD_LIBRARY_FILE the current directory.
In the shell I can just do:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$(pwd)
ulimit -s SOME_NUMBER
Is there way to make a rule inside a makefile that is equivalent to running this two commands and will update the environment variables after the makefile is run?
You can link the executables with -z stack-size=VALUE or -rpath, which might have a similar effect.
You could push the command characters to the TTY layer and hope that the shell will execute them, but that is a bit nasty. The makefile could also compile a program which does the job using ptrace, but that would be very ugly as well.
No
A child process in bash cannot effect the environment of the calling shell (as #mpez pointed out). This is done on purpose to avoid some security holes. It's possible to export the commands to change the environment variable to a script, and run that script after you run make (which can be automated through another script), but make itself cannot effect the environment of the calling shell.
I knew that commands in a makefile get executed in a new instance of shell (one new instance per each command). But I did not know that my .cshrc.local (in case of csh/tcsh) is sourced again for each of that shell instance!
How can I tell make to not do that? I want each shell instance created from inside make to simply get the current shell's environment (the one from where I am running make) and not source my .cshrc.local
Hope the question makes sense.
My bad. I ignored the fact that my command was a shell script (with a shebang /bin/tcsh). I looked at tcsh help, and found that I should pass -f argument if I want to skip sourcing the startup file. Added that to my shell script and it does what I want.
So, I was mistaken that make commands source startup file while creating a new shell instance. They do not.
I have a shell script on a mac (OSX 10.9) named msii810161816_TMP_CMD with the following content.
matlab
When I execute it, I get
./msii810161816_TMP_CMD: line 1: matlab: command not found
However, when I type matlab into the shell directly it starts as normal. How can it be that the same command works inside the shell but not inside a shell script? I copy-pasted the command directly from the script into the shell and it worked ...
PS: When I replace the content of the script with
echo matlab
I get the desired result, so I can definitely execute the shell script (I use ./msii810161816_TMP_CMD)
Thanks guys!
By default, aliases are not expanded in non-interactive shells, which is what shell scripts are. Aliases are intended to be used by a person at the keyboard as a typing aid.
If your goal is to not have to type the full path to matlab, instead of creating an alias you should modify your $PATH. Add /Applications/MATLAB_R2014a.app/bin to your $PATH environment variable and then both you and your shell scripts will be able to simply say
matlab
This is because, as commenters have stated, the PATH variable inside of the shell executing the script does not include the directory containing the matlab executable.
When a command name is used, like "matlab", your shell looks at every directory in the PATH in order, searching for one containing an executable file with the name "matlab".
Without going into too much detail, the PATH is determined by the shell being invoked.
When you execute bash, it combines a global setting for basic directories that must be in the PATH with any settings in your ~/.bashrc which alter the PATH.
Most likely, you are not running your script in a shell where the PATH includes matlab's directory.
To verify this, you can take the following steps:
Run which matlab. This will show you the path to the matlab executable.
Run echo "$PATH". This will show you your current PATH settings. Note that the directory from which matlab is included in the colon-separated list.
Add a line to the beginning of your script that does echo "$PATH". Note that the directory from which matlab is not included.
To resolve this, ensure that your script is executed in a shell that has the needed directory in the PATH.
You can do this a few ways, but the two most highly recommended ones would be
Add a shebang line to the start of your script. Assuming that you want to run it with bash, do #!/bin/bash or whatever the path to your bash interpreter is.
The shebang line is not actually fully standardized by POSIX, so BSD-derived systems like OSX will happily handle multiple arguments to the shebanged executable, while Linux systems pass at most one argument.
In spite of this, the shebang is an easy and simple way to document what should be used to execute the script, so it's a good solution.
Explicitly invoke your script with a shell as its interpreter, as in bash myscript.sh or tcsh myscript.sh or even sh myscript.sh
This is not incompatible with using a shebang line, and using both is a common practice.
I believe that the default shell on OSX is always bash, so you should start by trying with that.
If these instructions don't help, then you'll have to dig deeper to find out why or how the PATH is being altered between the calling context and the script's internal context.
Ultimately, this is almost certainly the source of your issue.
I have some proxy settings that I only occasionally want to turn on, so I don't want to put them in my ~/.bash_profile. I tried putting them directly in ~/bin/set_proxy_env.sh, adding ~/bin to my PATH, and chmod +xing the script but though the script runs, the variables don't stick in my shell. Does anyone know how to get them to stick around for the rest of the shell session?
Use one of:
source <file>
. <file>
In the script use
export varname=value
and also execute the script with:
source set_proxy_env.sh.
The export keyword ensures the variable is marked for automatic inclusion in the environment of subsequently executed commands. Using source to execute a script starts it with the present shell instead of launching a temporary one for the script.
Did you try this:
. ~/bin/set_proxy_env.sh
Running it by itself opens a separate subshell (I think) and sets the variable there. But then the binding is lost after exiting back into your shell. The dot at the front tells it to run it within the same shell.
Also, don't forget to export the variables you need like so: export MYVAR=value