Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1113806
Accepted
Alex Stelmakh
Asked: 2019-01-30 05:17:53 +0800 CST

How can I add ~/.local/bin to my PATH?

  • 772

I'm just trying to follow this tutorial and set up my environment. My system is WSL Ubuntu 18.04. Here is already an answer on my question, but I as an absolute novice in Linux/UNIX don't know which variant presented there more suitable for my goal. Do I need to add this string

export PATH="$PATH:/path/to/dir"

into my ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc file?

Or may I need to accomplish the second step from the answer?

cd /usr/bin
sudo ln -s /path/to/binary binary-name

And then run these commands?

source ~/.profile 
or
source ~/.bashrc
paths windows-subsystem-for-linux

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If you make a ~/bin folder in your home folder, it'll already be in your default path. No need to modify anything, or add folders to a hidden .local folder. Create the ~/bin folder, log out, log back in, and open a terminal window, and you can confirm the path by typing echo $PATH.

    Update #1:

    If you decide to use ~/.local/bin anyway, add this to the end of your ~/.profile...

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

    Then log out, log back in, and your new path will be available.

    • 18

  2. The PATH variable gets changed when this shell command is executed:

    export PATH=$PATH:/your/new/path

    The ~/.bashrc and ~/.profile will be executed automatically when you open a bash session (normally when you open a new terminal window/tab).

    So if you want to change the PATH in current shell session only, you could just type export PATH=xxx and execute it once. But if you want to make it difference permanently, you should add the command above into ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile.

    • 4