Where do I find the bashrc file on Mac?

Question

Hello I am following this page.. I'm installing Python onto my mac so that I can set up a Django / Eclipse development environment.
However I am not too sure how to go about executing this step:

• The script will explain what changes it will make and prompt you before the installation begins.
• Once you’ve installed Homebrew, insert the Homebrew directory at the top of your PATH environment variable.

• You can do this by adding the following line at the bottom of your ~/.bashrc file

• export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

Where do I find the bashrc file on my mac and where do I find the homebrew directory?

I am running a macbook pro with OS 10.8.5.

Answer 1

The .bashrc file is in your home directory.

So from command line do:

cd
ls -a

This will show all the hidden files in your home directory. "cd" will get you home and ls -a will "list all".

In general when you see ~/ the tilda slash refers to your home directory. So ~/.bashrc is your home directory with the .bashrc file.

And the standard path to homebrew is in /usr/local/ so if you:

cd /usr/local
ls | grep -i homebrew

you should see the homebrew directory (/usr/local/homebrew). Source

Yes sometimes you may have to create this file and the typical format of a .bashrc file is:

# .bashrc

# User specific aliases and functions
. .alias
alias ducks='du -cks * | sort -rn | head -15'

# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
    . /etc/bashrc
fi

PATH=$PATH:/home/username/bin:/usr/local/homebrew
export PATH

If you create your own .bashrc file make sure that the following line is in your ~/.bash_profile

# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
    . ~/.bashrc
fi

Answer 2

Open Terminal and execute commands given below.

cd /etc
subl bashrc

subl denotes Sublime editor. You can replace subl with vi to open bashrc file in default editor. This will workout only if you have bashrc file, created earlier.

Answer 3

I would think you should add it to ~/.bash_profile instead of .bashrc, (creating .bash_profile if it doesn't exist.) Then you don't have to add the extra step of checking for ~/.bashrc in your .bash_profile

Are you comfortable working and editing in a terminal? Just in case, ~/ means your home directory, so if you open a new terminal window that is where you will be "located". And the dot at the front makes the file invisible to normal ls command, unless you put -a or specify the file name.

Check this answer for more detail.

Answer 4

~/.bashrc is already a path to .bashrc.

If you do echo ~ you'll see that it's a path to your home directory.

Homebrew directory is /usr/local/bin. Homebrew is installed inside it and everything installed by homebrew will be installed there.

For example, if you do brew install python Homebrew will put Python binary in /usr/local/bin.

Finally, to add Homebrew directory to your path you can run echo "export PATH=/usr/local/lib:$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc. It will create .bashrc file if it doesn't exist and then append the needed line to the end.

You can check the result by running tail ~/.bashrc.