Source new .bashrc in all open terminals

Question

I find myself having many terminals open at once all the time. When I update my .bashrc, I have to go to each terminal and execute

. .bashrc

to source the terminal with the new .bashrc.

This is kind of a pain and also time consuming. I was wondering if there is a way of sourcing all open terminals with the new .bashrc file without going to each one or logging out and starting over?

Answer 1

terdon's approach works well under the right circumstances, but if, e.g., .bashrc appends to the PATH variable, it will cause errors rather quickly.

Instead of simply resourcing the file, you could check its modification time first and compare it to the mtime of the last sourced version.

To do so, append this to ~/.bashrc:

• Linux

  bashrc_sourced=$(stat -c %Y ~/.bashrc)
  
  PROMPT_COMMAND='
      test $(stat -c %Y ~/.bashrc) -ne $bashrc_sourced && source ~/.bashrc
  '
  

• OS X and BSD

  bashrc_sourced=$(stat -f %m ~/.bashrc)
  
  PROMPT_COMMAND='
      test $(stat -f %m ~/.bashrc) -ne $bashrc_sourced && source ~/.bashrc
  '
  

Then, resource it manually one final time.

Answer 2

In general, please remember to include your Operating System, the correct answer is often system dependent. Remember that bash is used by default on most Linuxes, OS X and many UNIXes.

Anyway, in your case the OS should be irrelevant, so what you need to do is set the PROMPT_COMMAND variable:

Bash provides an environment variable called PROMPT_COMMAND. The contents of this variable are executed as a regular Bash command just before Bash displays a prompt.

So, since the command you want to run is sourcing ~/.bashrc, add this line to your ~/.bashrc (the . is just an alias to source):

PROMPT_COMMAND='source ~/.bashrc'

Now, every time Bash displays a prompt, it will first re-read ~/.bashrc. To get your open terminals (as long as they've been opened after you set PROMPT_COMMAND) to update just run any command or simply hit Enter.

WARNING: Depending on the complexity of your ~/.bashrc, this could add a noticeable lag since any commands in the file will be executed repeatedly.

Answer 3

KISS

Put either or both of these in either or both of /etc/profile and ~/.bashrc

alias sProf='source /etc/profile'
alias sBrc='source ~/.bashrc'

another approach:

Copy a terminal line including everything between the arrows to include the command and the newline and the middle-click it into every terminal.

  <---------------------------->
$ source ~/.bashrc             | terminal border