Bash – How to add a bash script to your PATH variable using symlinks

bashcommandpathshellsymlink

I run a gaming server called PocketMine. So basically I have a folder in my home directory that has a bash script to run the server: ~/PocketMine/start.sh

Everytime I want to run the server I either cd into the folder and ./start.sh or PocketMine/./start.sh

I want to know how do I add a symlink called pocketmine in /usr/local/sbin (a lot of progs with symlinks goes here) that will run start.sh and use the contents of its dir.

/usr/local/sbin/pocketmine = ~/PocketMine/./start.sh

Call me lazy but im tired of cd-ing into the folder and running the script instead of just typing one command.

Best Answer

You actually don't need any symlinks, just edit your ~/.bashrc and add the following statement:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/PocketMine

This avoids polluting your filesystem with unnecessary clutter like symlinks. If you are a csh/tcsh user rather than a bash user, then edit ~/.cshrc and add

set path = ( $path ~/PocketMine )

Personally I'd go one step further in organization. I'd create a ~/bin directory, and put your start script in there, perhaps with a more distinctive name like pmstart (it's not significant that it's a shell script, is it? Maybe someday you want to re-implement it in Python or something. .sh suffices on executables are usually a bad idea because you're exposing and hard-coding an implementation detail (the implementation language) that end-users don't care about, and in the process committing yourself to that implementation detail unnecessarily).

It's likely your $PATH already includes $HOME/bin, but if not you can add it similarly.

Finally, there's are historical conventions/best practices as to what things go into sbin directories and what things go into bin directories. sbin is usually reserved for tools for administrators, while bin is for general end-user utilities.

Related Solutions

Copy symlink AND where it points to using rsync

If you know the symlink name and want to transfer the link and the target you can:

rsync -a 'symlink' .
realdir="$(basename "$(readlink -f 'symlink')")"
rsync -a "$realdir" .

The first rsync transfers just the symlink. The second command finds the real directory name, and the second rsync transfers the directory content.

Shell – What idempotent command can I use to make a symlink pointing to a directory

You should use the -T option for this, it tells ln to always treat the link name as the desired link name, never as a directory.

Without this option, if you give ln a link name which exists as a directory, it creates a new link to the target inside that directory.

Note that -T is a GNU-ism (at least, it’s not in POSIX), but you’re already using -v which is a GNU-ism too so I imagine that’s not an issue.

Alternatively, you can just specify the parent directory as the link name, and the link will always be (re-)created there:

ln -sfv /tmp/test_symlink/repo/resources/snippets /tmp/test_symlink/foo/

This works because your symlink has the same name as the target.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Copy symlink AND where it points to using rsync

Shell – What idempotent command can I use to make a symlink pointing to a directory

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