re-use '~/.profile` for Fish?

Question

(I'm talking about the shell Fish, esp. Fish's Fish.)

For Bash/ZSH, I had ~/.profile with some exports, aliases and other stuff.

I don't want to have a separate config for environment variables for Fish, I want to re-use my ~/.profile. How?

In The FAQ, it is stated that I can at least import those via /usr/local/share/fish/tools/import_bash_settings.py, however I don't really like running that for each Fish-instance.

Answer 1

You can use bash to parse /etc/profile and ~/.profile, and then start fish.

1. Create /usr/local/bin/fishlogin with contents

    #!/bin/bash -l
    exec -l fish "$@"
   

2. Make it executable

    sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/fishlogin
   

3. Check that it works by running fishlogin and checking that you end up in a Fish shell. Press Control+D to exit the Fish shell.

4. Add it to /etc/shells

    echo /usr/local/bin/fishlogin | sudo tee -a /etc/shells
   

5. Set it as your default shell.

   Under Linux:

    sudo usermod -s /usr/local/bin/fishlogin $USER
   

   Under macOS:

    chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fishlogin $USER
   

Answer 2

For a much cleaner solution, you can use the foreign env plugin:

fenv source ~/.profile

Answer 3

My current solution (see here for a maybe more recent version):

egrep "^export " ~/.profile | while read e
    set var (echo $e | sed -E "s/^export ([A-Z_]+)=(.*)\$/\1/")
    set value (echo $e | sed -E "s/^export ([A-Z_]+)=(.*)\$/\2/")

    # remove surrounding quotes if existing
    set value (echo $value | sed -E "s/^\"(.*)\"\$/\1/")

    if test $var = "PATH"
        # replace ":" by spaces. this is how PATH looks for Fish
        set value (echo $value | sed -E "s/:/ /g")

        # use eval because we need to expand the value
        eval set -xg $var $value

        continue
    end

    # evaluate variables. we can use eval because we most likely just used "$var"
    set value (eval echo $value)

    set -xg $var $value
end

Answer 4

You can use bass, a plugin to execute bash commands in fish.

1. Install bass.

   $ git clone https://github.com/edc/bass.git
   $ cd bass
   $ make install
   

2. And then, just put this in your config.fish:

   bass source ~/.profile
   

Answer 5

I tried sourcing .profile on fish startup and it worked like a charm for me.

just do :

echo 'source ~/.profile;clear;' >  ~/.config/fish/config.fish

Restart terminal or iterm2, test an alias from .profile to test.

Note : Won't work with more complex .profile files that use syntax not available in fish - credit @erb

Answer 6

Install dash and add this line to your config.fish:

env -i HOME=$HOME dash -l -c 'export -p' | sed -e "/PATH/s/'//g;/PATH/s/:/ /g;s/=/ /;s/^export/set -x/" | source

Answer 7

You can't. fish's syntax is too different from Bourne shell (/bin/sh) syntax. This is the same reason you can't use .profile with other non-Bourne-derived shells, such as csh and tcsh.

Answer 8

If your distribution uses PAM, you could set your environment variables in your ~/.pam_environment file.

Answer 9

You can start Fish from Bash. If you do that, Fish will inherit all environment variables (export FOO=bar) from Bash. At this point, Bash will have already read your .profile (or the like).

bash-3.2$ export TEST="test"
bash-3.2$ fish
cmey@MBP ~> echo $TEST
test

Answer 10

I managed to solve this by adding the following to my ~/.bashrc file:

if [ $SHLVL -lt 2 ]; then 
    fish; 
    exit;
fi

This way one does not have to type exit twice when exiting the fish subshell. Bash subshells inside the fish subshell are not affected.

Answer 11

You can try code below. It works for me.

if status is-login
    if not set -q __sourced_profile
        set -x __sourced_profile 1
        exec bash -c "\
            test -e /etc/profile && source /etc/profile
            test -e $HOME/.bash_profile && source $HOME/.bash_profile
            exec fish --login
        "
    end
# put your configs below

#

set -e __sourced_profile

end