screen manpage has misleading bash example (patch incl)

[Tired Sysadmin]

The screen(1) page in version 4.09.00 describes the 'shell' command/option ending with

   [...] If the command begins with a '-' character, the shell
   will be started as a login-shell. Typical shells do only
   minimal initialization when not started as a login-shell.
   E.g. Bash will not read your ~/.bashrc unless it is a login-shell.

This is incorrect and misleading. According to the bash(1) page, it only looks for ~/.bash_profile (and similar files) for a login shell, but looks for ~/.bashrc when "an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started".

Obviously minor priority, but should be trivial to fix since it's just an example filename.

--- screen-4.9.0/doc/screen.1.orig 2022-08-17 16:15:50.692428551 +0000
+++ screen-4.9.0/doc/screen.1 2022-08-17 16:16:26.455895679 +0000
@@ -3308,7 +3308,7 @@
 execute the program specified in $SHELL.
 If the command begins with a '\-' character, the shell will be started as a
 login-shell. Typical shells do only minimal initialization when not started as a login-shell.
-E.g. Bash will not read your \*Q~/.bashrc\*U unless it is a login-shell.
+E.g. Bash will not read your \*Q~/.bash_profile\*U unless it is a login-shell.
 .RE
 .TP
 .B "shelltitle \fItitle\fP"

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
Package: screen 4.9.0-1
ProcVersionSignature: User Name 5.15.0-1017.21-aws 5.15.39
Uname: Linux 5.15.0-1017-aws x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu82.1
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
Date: Wed Aug 17 16:07:30 2022
Ec2AMI: ami-02306cf196ee482f9
Ec2AMIManifest: (unknown)
Ec2AvailabilityZone: us-east-2b
Ec2InstanceType: t2.micro
Ec2Kernel: unavailable
Ec2Ramdisk: unavailable
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=C.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: screen
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Paride Legovini (paride)]

Hello and thanks for this bug report. I agree with your conclusions and your patch, however given that the bug is very minor and that the screen package in Ubuntu is currently a sync from Debian I think the right thing to do is to fix the manpage in Debian or (even better) upstream. I believe the screen project lives here:

  https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/screen/

could you resubmit this bug report (and your patch) there, and link it from here? As an alternative, could you file a bug against the Debian screen package? See:

  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=screen;dist=unstable

Thanks!

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Confirmed. If that weird logic of bash makes you a headache, have a look at the matrix at https://web.archive.org/web/20210925033649/https://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article25/shrc

Paride: Will apply that patch in Debian soon and close this Ubuntu bug report with it.

Tired: I'd be happy if you would file an upstream report at https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=screen&func=additem anyways. Thanks in advance!

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Fix committed as https://salsa.debian.org/debian/screen/-/commit/f275b121234e44137b5e34c333afb61d8b16cb1a

I also fixed the same issue in screen's texinfo file.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package screen - 4.9.0-2

---------------
screen (4.9.0-2) unstable; urgency=medium

  * Add patch to fix bash example in man page. (LP: #1986839) Thanks to
    Tired Sysadmin on Launchpad for the bug report and initial patch!
  * Bracketize lintian overrides.
  * Add lintian overrides for binary files in utf8encodings/.
  * Declare compliance with Debian Policy 4.6.1. (No changes needed.)

 -- Axel Beckert <email address hidden> Wed, 24 Aug 2022 03:45:18 +0200