Comment 3 for bug 1097467

This has apparently been an issue for some considerable time. I've just now run into it while delving into a failure in pexpect's test-suite (during work on LP: #1987420), which apparently assumes that using --rcfile will suppress both the user *and* the system's bashrc (as the man-page documents).

However, I'm not entirely convinced this is a bug in bash, so much as its man-page. Reading the original code (shell.c in bash) its intent is fairly clear: execute the system-wide bashrc in all interactive shells, but permit the user's bashrc to be overridden by --rcfile.

It's worth noting that the original (upstream, not Debian) man-page makes no mention of the system-wide bashrc because it's an option that's not activated by default. The Debian packaging enables the system-wide bashrc (SYS_BASHRC in d/p/deb-bash-config.diff) and then patches the man-page to mention it (d/p/man-bashrc.diff). In other words, I suspect this is a documentation bug rather than a behavioural bug (i.e. the man-page is wrong, not the behaviour).