Environment vars - where to set?

[Andy]

Darren Wheatley wrote:

>>~/.bashrc is probably better, especially if you uncomment the bit in
>>~/.bash_profile that sources ~/.bashrc.
> 
> 
> Do these get called in Ubuntu though? I thought from other posts that these
> files weren't called when you logged in / started a shell.

.bash_profile doesn't when you open a terminal within Gnome (it does if 
you log in via a console). .bashrc will run either way - but be called 
every time you open a new shell, not just once - so things you only want 
to happen once shouldn't go here.

I started a thread on this a while ago as some distros do run 
.bash_profile when doing a graphical login, but there didn't seem to be 
a consensus on the right approach.

What I did in the end (a little messy but it works) is call another 
script from both .bash_profile and .gnomerc which sets up things I 
always want run (including my path).

HTH

Andy