Call .bashrc for a C# process call

Question

So I want to call my .bashrc file for a subprocess in C# to setup some environment variables. I looked at this Set environment variables for a process but is there a simple way to call the .bashrc file for my subprocess without going through and setting all of my environment variables?

Answer 1

The .bashrc file is meaningless and useless unless the subprocess you are running is, in fact, bash. However, inasmuch as bash may indeed be launched if your executable is a shell script, and inasmuch as you can always write a wrapper script around the real intended executable, and inasmuch as you can use bash's -c option to run any other command via bash, putting bash in the loop isn't a big problem. (That supposes, of course, that you're running on a system that has bash. I don't necessarily assume that when the host program is in C#.)

Having one way or another gotten bash into the loop, your options are to read .bashrc explicitly via the . or source command, to pass the -i option to bash, or to name .bashrc via the environment variable BASH_ENV. Any of these will cause bash to read commands from your .basrc, including those setting environment variables.