Getting a 'source: not found' error when using source in a bash script

Question

I'm trying to write (what I thought would be) a simple bash script that will:

run virtualenv to create a new environment at $1
activate the virtual environment
do some more stuff (install django, add django-admin.py to the virtualenv's path, etc.)

Step 1 works quite well, but I can't seem to activate the virtualenv. For those not familiar with virtualenv, it creates an activate file that activates the virtual environment. From the CLI, you run it using source

source $env_name/bin/activate

Where $env_name, obviously, is the name of the dir that the virtual env is installed in.

In my script, after creating the virtual environment, I store the path to the activate script like this:

activate="`pwd`/$ENV_NAME/bin/activate"

But when I call source "$activate", I get this:

/home/clawlor/bin/scripts/djangoenv: 20: source: not found

I know that $activate contains the correct path to the activate script, in fact I even test that a file is there before I call source. But source itself can't seem to find it. I've also tried running all of the steps manually in the CLI, where everything works fine.

In my research I found this script, which is similar to what I want but is also doing a lot of other things that I don't need, like storing all of the virtual environments in a ~/.virtualenv directory (or whatever is in $WORKON_HOME). But it seems to me that he is creating the path to activate, and calling source "$activate" in basically the same way I am.

Here is the script in its entirety:

#!/bin/sh

PYTHON_PATH=~/bin/python-2.6.1/bin/python

if [ $# = 1 ]
then
    ENV_NAME="$1"
    virtualenv -p $PYTHON_PATH --no-site-packages $ENV_NAME
    activate="`pwd`/$ENV_NAME/bin/activate"

    if [ ! -f "$activate" ]
    then
        echo "ERROR: activate not found at $activate"
        return 1
    fi

    source "$activate"
else
    echo 'Usage: djangoenv ENV_NAME'
fi

DISCLAIMER: My bash script-fu is pretty weak. I'm fairly comfortable at the CLI, but there may well be some extremely stupid reason this isn't working.

guns · Accepted Answer · 2009-03-21 23:30:46Z

250

If you're writing a bash script, call it by name:

#!/bin/bash

/bin/sh is not guaranteed to be bash. This caused a ton of broken scripts in Ubuntu some years ago (IIRC).

The source builtin works just fine in bash; but you might as well just use dot like Norman suggested.

answered Mar 21, 2009 at 23:30

guns

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2 Comments

Chris Lawlor Over a year ago

This solution was originally a comment in Norman Ramsey's answer. Since this is what actually fixed the problem, I've changed this to be the 'accepted answer'

Brōtsyorfuzthrāx Over a year ago

So, how do you call bash by name if you were just typing source ~/.bashrc before? Do you do bash ~/.bashrc?

Norman Ramsey · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-03 17:56:02Z

227

In the POSIX standard, which /bin/sh is supposed to respect, the command is . (a single dot), not source. The source command is a csh-ism that has been pulled into bash.

Try

. $env_name/bin/activate

Or if you must have non-POSIX bash-isms in your code, use #!/bin/bash.

edited Dec 3, 2015 at 17:56

answered Mar 21, 2009 at 23:25

Norman Ramsey

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5 Comments

Chris Lawlor Over a year ago

That fixes it. (changing /bin/sh to /bin/bash). For some reason the environment is not activated in the CLI when the script finishes, but that's a minor problem.

Richard Hansen Over a year ago

According to the Bash manual source is a synonym for ..

Nikhil Owalekar Over a year ago

I came across this when using a docker container with entrypoint like this, /bin/sh -c '/path/to/script.sh'. Even though my script was a bash script, source failed to source the exports. But "." worked!

pa1983 Over a year ago

This fixed it for me - testing my .sh in the shell was working with source, but failing in Jenkins. Changing source to a dot worked in the shell and most importantly, worked in Jenkins too. Thanks!

user3237992 Feb 18 at 16:57

As @NikhilOwalekar I also came across this during containerisation, albeit with Apptainer/Singularity. Using "." instead of "source" worked for me as well.

Addison · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-12 05:28:01Z

38

In Ubuntu if you execute the script with sh scriptname.sh you get this problem.

Try executing the script with ./scriptname.sh instead.

edited Jun 12, 2017 at 5:28

Addison

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answered Sep 21, 2010 at 5:20

Madhu

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3 Comments

max pleaner Over a year ago

i got a segmentation fault when doing this.

Randy Over a year ago

File must be executable: chmod +x filename.sh

Yuval Adam Over a year ago

Any idea why this is?

Michael Cooper aka mikoop · Accepted Answer · 2023-02-21 06:25:29Z

1

best to add the full path of the file you intend to source.

eg

source ./.env instead of source .env

or source /var/www/html/site1/.env

answered Feb 21, 2023 at 6:25

Michael Cooper aka mikoop

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Comments

viraj ghorpade · Accepted Answer · 2023-08-16 05:06:43Z

0

After multiple attempts I found below. Simply do

$ ./env_name/bin/activate

answered Aug 16, 2023 at 5:06

viraj ghorpade

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