.bashrc/.profile is not loaded on new tmux session (or window) — why?

Question

When tmux starts or opens a new window, it does not load my .profile or .bashrc. I end up typing . ~/.bashrc every time. Is there a

Answer 1

Former answers provided solutions but didn't explain the reason. Here it is.

This is related to the Bash init files. By default, ~/.bashrc is used in an interactive, non-login shell. It won't be sourced in a login shell. Tmux uses a login shell by default. Hence, shells started by tmux skip ~/.bashrc.

default-command shell-command

The default is an empty string, which instructs tmux to create a login shell using the value of the default-shell option.

Init files for Bash,

1. login mode:
   1. /etc/profile
   2. ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, ~/.profile (only first one that exists)
2. interactive non-login:
   1. /etc/bash.bashrc (some Linux; not on Mac OS X)
   2. ~/.bashrc
3. non-interactive:
   1. source file in $BASH_ENV

The weird interactive, non-login loading requirement confuses people in other situations as well. The best solution is to change the loading requirement of ~/.bashrc as interactive only, which is exactly what some distros, like Ubuntu, are doing.

# write content below into ~/.profile, or ~/.bash_profile

# if running bash
if [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ]; then
    # include .bashrc if it exists
    if [ -f "$HOME/.bashrc" ]; then
    . "$HOME/.bashrc"
    fi
fi

This should be the solution you desire. And I recommend every Bash user setup this in the profile.

References

• Unix Shell Initialization
• man tmux