Why can't my scripts set environment variables?
 

Greetings. This is my first post on this forum. I am trying to make my computer set some environment variables as follows (the exact variables aren't really important for this question):

CPPFLAGS='-I/opt/glibmm/include -I/opt/gtk/include -I/opt/gtkmm/include -I/opt/libsigc++/include -I/opt/xine-lib/include $CPPFLAGS'
LDFLAGS='-L/opt/glibmm/lib -L/opt/gtk/lib -L/opt/gtkmm/lib -L/opt/libsigc++/lib -L/opt/xine-lib/lib $LDFLAGS'
PKG_CONFIG_PATH='/opt/glibmm/lib/pkgconfig:/opt/gtk/lib/pkgconfig:/opt/gtkmm/lib/pkgconfig:/opt/libsigc++/lib/pkgconfig:/opt/xine-lib/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH'
LD_LIBRARY_PATH='/opt/glibmm/lib:/opt/gtk/lib:/opt/gtkmm/lib:/opt/libsigc++/lib:/opt/xine-lib/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH'
PATH='/opt/gtk/bin:/opt/xine-lib/bin:/opt/xine-ui/bin:$PATH'
export CPPFLAGS LDFLAGS PKG_CONFIG_PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH

If I paste these lines into the shell, they work for that instance of the shell. When I restart the shell, I must repaste them. If I put them in ~/.bash_profile, they have no effect. If I put them into a file and run that file, it has no effect whatsoever. What am I doing wrong?

I'm using Fedora Core 2 if that makes any difference.

Thanks in advance!

Welcome to LQ.

They will only last for the duration of that script. You will need to source the script into your shell using iether of:
source /path/to/script
. /path/to/script

Thanks! That made the script commands work as I wanted (I also had to change my apostrophes to quotes). What is the best way to make the script run every time I open the console if I only want it to apply to my account?

Try putting them in your ~/.bashrc script instead.

If you put them in ~/.bash_profile they'll take effect the next time you log in. bash_profile is a good way to set variables to be available from any shell.
bashrc will only set variables for non-login shells, unless you have "source $HOME/.bashrc" in ~/.bash_profile

Putting it in ~/.bashrc worked. Thanks!