title: Adding bash functions to the $PATH or to bash shell automatically
body: <p>Is there a way to add bash functions to the $PATH, or to the bash shell, without requiring an end-user to source them manually?</p>
  
  <p>In other words, if we have a software library that exports only bash functions, we normally require the end-user to source the bash scripts with</p>
  
  <pre><code>. "$HOME/.the_scripts/"*.sh
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and then using them. But is there a way to somehow get the bash functions into the shell without requiring the user to add a line of code to ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile, etc?</p>
  
  <p><strong>What am I trying to do?</strong> I am trying to obviate the need for users to add a call to source a bash script for a library they just installed.</p>