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:

1. run virtualenv to create a new environment at $1
2. activate the virtual environment
3. 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 it's 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.

Answer 1

In bash the command is . (a single dot), not source. The source command is a csh-ism.

Try

. $env_name/bin/activate

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

Some random things I would suggest to try:

1. $ENV_NAME is not the same as $env_name,
2. the call to pwd can be left out,
3. check if the activate script sources some other script.

Did you print out the filename you source just before you actually source it?

Answer 4

In ubuntu if you are executing script with sh scriptname.sh then you will get this problem. Try executing script like ./scriptname.sh. Your problem will be fixed.