wayneeseguin/rvm — Issue #774: RVM Install and Dotfiles
Author: kmowery
Created: 2012-02-21 21:37:16+00:00
State: open

After installing RVM earlier today using the rvm-install script, I found that my bash environment had mysteriously gone missing. The culprit?

rvm-install created .bash_login and modified .bashrc, while my shell configuration lives in .profile (and .bashrc is a pointer to .profile). Upon creating a new shell, .bash_login shadows .profile and my configuration silently disappears.

rvm-install should, instead, check for the existence of .profile, .bash_login, and .bash_profile and, if one is found, modify the one with highest bash priority. Only if none exist should rvm-install create a new file.

Lastly (and this is a philosophical issue and not part of the bug), rvm-install should _not touch my dotfiles under any circumstances_. Let the user do that. You don't know what you might be breaking or how the environment is configured. At the very least, add a switch to rvm-install that turns off dotfile modification and provide appropriate documentation for the user to configure their shell environment hemselves.