How to make OS X to read .bash_profile not .profile file

Question

I have read so many suggestions about, not putting your customization aka commands in ".profile" file. Rather, create a .bash_profile for yourself and add your alias and etc.

But,when I open the new terminal, if there is only .bash_profile, OS X is not exporting/sourcing the commands mentioned in it. I have to manually source the .bash_profile.

If I create .profile file, on opening a new terminal, all my commands in .profile are executed and will be available readily.

Could you please help me in understanding, how does it works? Also, when to use .bashrc/.profile/.bash_profile files.

Thanks!

Answer 1

According to the manual page that ships with OS X:

... it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable. The --noprofile option may be used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior.

It should only read ~/.profile as a last resort if neither ~/.bash_profile nor ~/.bash_login are readable.

On all of my OS X systems, I have my ~/.bash_profile set to:

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

It is highly recommended that you do this on OS X in order to get bash to read your ~/.bashrc file like you would expect.

Answer 2

It's also possible that your terminal shell is defaulting to sh instead of bash. You can verify this first:

$ echo $SHELL /bin/tcsh 

To change this to bash, you can go into your Terminal -> Preferences -> Startup tab, and change "Shell Opens With:" from "Default login shell" to Command and value "/bin/bash".

Alternately, you can change your default shell by executing the following command at the command prompt:

chsh -s bin/bash 

After you do one of these, open a new shell window, and your .bash_profile should be sourced.