Setting up environment variables

[amita0204]

What is the difference between setting up environment variables by editing .bashrc (or/etc/bash.bashrc) file and /etc/profile file (apart from setting up for single user and all user)?
Bash is a type of shell. So will editing .bashrc or or bash.bashrc file make changes only to shell run commands/applications? Or will the changes get applied to applications like eclipse (not invoked from the command line)?

Thanks,
Amita.

[tpl]

welcome to the forum

"export foo=bar"

makes available to any program that scans the
environment, the value "bar" for the environment variable "foo"

as for your question about /etc/profile vs /etc/bashrc, you
will find "man bash" gives a good explanation.

[Cabhan]

The profile vs. rc thing has to do with the differences in behaviour between interactive and non-interactive shells. I can't remember the exact differences, but Google should tell you.

As for what purpose environment variables have, remember that EVERYTHING is run from a shell. In the case of a non-CLI program, it is executed by the window manager / desktop environment, which was itself executed by a shell. So assuming that the shell has the right properties set, everything will be affected.

Having said that, the only way to make the shell aware of changes is to tell it to reload its configuration or start up a new shell. So to make your UI aware of environment changes, you need to actually shut down the system (or, if you can, fully log out, including shutting down the UI).

[WetCoastCoder]

I modified my .bash_profile to include the following line at the tail end of the file:

export CATALLINA_HOME=/home/patrick/apache-tomcat-6.0.20

I then opened a terminal window and typed:

echo $CATALINA_HOME. Nothing appeared. Am I missing something?

[daark.child]

You need to logout and back in again for the variable to become effective. If you don't want to log out, you can start a terminal and run "source .bash_profile", The new variable will only work in that terminal window.