linux - How to export a variable in Bash

Question

I need to set a system environment variable from a Bash script that would be available outside of the current scope. So you would normally export environment variables like this:

export MY_VAR=/opt/my_var

But I need the environment variable to be available at a system level though. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Not really - once you're running in a subprocess you can't affect your parent.

There two possibilities:

1. Source the script rather than run it (see source .):

   source {script}
   

2. Have the script output the export commands, and eval that:

   eval `bash {script}`
   

   Or:

   eval "$(bash script.sh)"