urxvt -e doesn't source .zshrc

Question

I want to create a key binding for the common task: open a new terminal window and open the program ranger in it.

The obvious command would be something like that:

urxvt -e ranger

The important things work right out of the box. But in ranger I want to use a different program called fzf, and this program is not found. The error message zsh:1: command not found: fzf.

Same result with

urxvt -e zsh -c ranger

When I already have an opened terminal and call ranger in it, then fzf can be called without any problems.

I took a look, and the path to the binary of fzf gets added to $PATH in my .zshrc. So my assumption is that this never sources my .zshrc, and it never gets added to the path.

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There is an obvious fix for this (call fzf inside ranger using the full path ~/.fzf/bin/fzf), but this problem annoyed me quite a few times already, and I want a nice solution.

How can I open a new terminal, that sources .zshrc and opens the program ranger?

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One more observation that I don't understand:

I created a script myranger.sh:

#!/usr/bin/zsh
source ~/.zshrc
ranger

and created the new terminal with:

urxvt -e myranger.sh

The terminal with ranger opens, but fzf is still not in $PATH. What did I miss here?

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Btw, this is not zsh or urxvt specific. I also tested this with bash and/or gnome-terminal.

Answer 1

urxvt -e zsh -c ranger is pretty much equivalent to urxvt -e ranger. You're telling urxvt to run zsh, and zsh to run ranger, and that's it. urxvt -e zsh -c ranger does not load .zshrc: zsh only loads it when starting an interactive shell, i.e. a shell that reads user commands, not when starting a shell that runs a script (whether this script is in a file, or passed on the command line with -c).

You can load .zshrc explicitly (urxvt -e zsh -c '. ~/.zshrc; ranger', or use a wrapper script as you did). This isn't a good idea though, because .zshrc is for interactive settings of zsh — key bindings, aliases, etc. Environment variable settings (e.g. PATH) apply to all programs, so they should be done at login time, usually in ~/.profile. Move your PATH setting from .zshrc to .profile where it belongs.

Answer 2

Quoting zsh manual:

INVOCATION

-i Force shell to be interactive.

and later

If the shell is a login shell, commands are read from /etc/zprofile and then $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile. Then, if the shell is interactive, commands are read from /etc/zshrc and then $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc. Finally, if the shell is a login shell, /etc/zlogin and $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin are read.

...

If ZDOTDIR is unset, HOME is used instead.

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So, to force sourcing .zshrc at start run

urxvt -e zsh -ci ranger