How to add samtools in the PATH permanently

Question

I installed samtools executables within my bin directory under home directory. Installation works perfectly well. I am using Ubuntu 14.04 version and it has .profile and .bashrc in my home directory which looks like this which I asked in my previous post.

I want to add my /home/user/bin directory permanently in my PATH so that when I open the terminal, it automatically has samtools in the path. My .profile says to put /home/user/bin in the path but it is not executable.

How can I do it?

I have to run it like this after opening the terminal

. .profile
which samtools
/home/user/bin/samtools

Hope to hear from you guys

Thanks

Hi Ron, I did this in my .bashrc and it worked export PATH=/path/to/dir:$PATH
but the post says .bashrc is not the right place to set env variables. Why is that?? — user3138373, Aug 17 '15 at 17:33
@user3138373 - Generally (quote): 'If you put your path in .profile it will be available to your complete desktop session'. Bash specific, I think the rc file is for the interactive bits, and the profile is for setting run time bits such as the path - see also: http://stefaanlippens.net/bashrc_and_others . This mostly explained in man bash — Wilf, Aug 17 '15 at 18:24
~/.profile adds ~/bin to PATH automatically if it exists. You don't need to do anything. — Gunnar Hjalmarsson, Aug 17 '15 at 19:29
Hi Gunnar, You are right, .profile adds bin folder the PATH but then why my executable's in that bin folder doesn't get sourced when I open up the terminal?? — user3138373, Aug 17 '15 at 20:05
Don't understand what you mean by "sourced" in this context. If you have an executable in your ~/bin named samtools, you can run it from anywhere by the command samtools. — Gunnar Hjalmarsson, Aug 17 '15 at 20:10
Btw, you need to log out and log in again after having created the ~/bin folder. — Gunnar Hjalmarsson, Aug 17 '15 at 20:27
This is my .profile file looks like It has this for loop in it
set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists

if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" fi So i just made a bin folder in my home directory and place my executables in that bin folder. closed the terminal , opened them again; typed which samtools and nothing is showed. If I do . .profile, then which samtools work. HELP!! — user3138373, Aug 17 '15 at 21:23
Log out from the session and log in again. Just closing and reopening the terminal is not sufficient. — Gunnar Hjalmarsson, Aug 17 '15 at 22:04

How to add samtools in the PATH permanently

set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists

0 Answers0