.bashrc not executed to the end

[Pekka Jääskeläinen]

The ~/.bashrc script is not executed to the end.

I noticed this when upgrading to Gutsy and my custom environment settings at the end of .bashrc didn't
appear anymore in my shell.

I tracked this to

if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi

No code after this block gets executed. If I add those environment settings to the top of the file, it works as expected.
However, I can imagine this breaks a lot of systems in an upgrade.

This is broken also in clean Gutsy installs (no upgrade).

[Pekka Jääskeläinen (pekka-jaaskelainen)]

Something strange happens here. It gets executed when I start a new shell, but not when I source it:

From the end of my .bashrc:

echo a
# enable programmable completion features (you don't need to enable
# this, if it's already enabled in /etc/bash.bashrc and /etc/profile
# sources /etc/bash.bashrc).
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi
echo b

visit0r@foo:~$. .bashrc
a
visit0r@foo:~$

visit0r@foo:~$ bash
a
b
visit0r@foo:~$

And even when I relogin to the system it seems to work:

ssh foo
...
a
b

So the problem is only when sourcing the script, it seems.

[François Marier (fmarier)]

I was also affected by this problem but was able to fix it when I removed the bash_completion line from my ~/.bashrc

It turns out that the bash_completion script was sourced twice: once in /etc/bash.bashrc and once in ~/.bashrc

I commented it out in ~/.bashrc and left it enabled in /etc/bash.bashrc and now it works fine. So it looks like the real problem is that the script is not idempotent (cannot be sourced more than once).

[uthpala (uthpalawe)]

Commenting the ~/.bashrc s bash completion line solves this problem. But it reduces the shell's capability to auto complete. For example when the line is commented man <tab twice> does nothing. When the line is there it tries to display all possibilities.