User Guide: murex Profile Files

A breakdown of the different files loaded on start up

murex has several profile files which are loaded in the following order of execution:

  1. ~/.murex_preload
  2. ~/.murex_modules/*/
  3. ~/.murex_profile

.murex_preload

This file should only used to define any environmental variables that might need to be set before the modules are loaded (eg including directories in $PATH if you have anything installed in non-standard locations).

Most of the time this file will be empty bar the standard warning message:

# This file is loaded before any murex modules. It should only contain
# environmental variables required for the modules to work eg:
#
#     export PATH=...
#
# Any other profile config belongs in your profile script instead:
# /home/$USER/.murex_profile

This file is created upon the first run of murex.

.murex_modules/

murex’s module directory - where all the modules are installed to. This directory is managed by murex-package builtin.

.murex_profile

This file is comparable to .bash_profile, .bashrc and .zshrc etc. It is the standard place to put all user and/or machine specific config in.

.murex_profile is only read from the users home directory. Unlike bash et al, profiles will not be read from /etc/profile.d nor similar. Modules should be used in its place.

Overriding The Default Paths (XDG)

Some individuals, particularly those running Linux, follow a standard called XDG Base Directory Specification. While murex does not adhere to this standard, instead conforming to the de facto standard defined by the past precedents of previous shells, in order to offer flexibility for those who do prefer the XDG specification murex does support overriding its own default paths via special environmental variables.

Where MUREX_PRELOAD and/or MUREX_PROFILE are directories rather than absolute file names, the path is appended with the default file names as named above.

For people who wish to use XDG paths, in many instances you can get away with setting the follow prior to launching murex (eg in /etc/profile.d):

MUREX_PRELOAD="$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/murex/"
MUREX_MODULES="$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/murex/"
MUREX_PROFILE="$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/murex/"

This, however, depends on $XDG_CONFIG_HOME pointing to a single path rather than an array of paths (like $PATH). In that instance you can still use custom paths in murex but you might need to get a little more creative in how you define that value.

See Also

This site's content is rebuilt automatically from murex's source code after each merge to the master branch. Downloadable murex binaries are also built with the website.

Last built on Mon Feb 13 09:18:06 UTC 2023 against commit f339958f33995895c1d997efcdbb8408d2c8d45f8b5f934.

Current version is which has been verified against 13950 tests cases.