.bashrc .profile .bash_profile

[Scott Haneda]

I need to understand this once and for all, there is varying info on  
this, the bash man page is verbose and not entirely clear.

        When  bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a  
non-inter-
        active shell with the --login option, it first reads and  
executes  com-
        mands  from  the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.   
After reading
        that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and  
~/.profile,
        in  that order, and reads and executes commands from the first  
one that
        exists and is readable.  The --noprofile option may be  used   
when  the
        shell is started to inhibit this behavior.

This implies, that only one of those files is read.  That it stops  
once it finds one.  I have:
.bash_profile, .bashrc, and .profile

The .profile, macports suggested I make, or maybe made it.
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
export MANPATH=/opt/local/share/man:$MANPATH

What is the suggested way to deal with these files?

I have .bashrc with some aliases, history control, ls colors, and  
apparently some PATH exports for macports.

        When  an  interactive  shell that is not a login shell is  
started, bash reads and
        executes commands from ~/.bashrc, if that file exists.  This  
may be inhibited  by
        using  the  --norc  option.  The --rcfile file option will  
force bash to read and
        execute commands from file instead of ~/.bashrc.

I am pretty sure I need to stop using .bashrc, since that is for  
interactive non login shells, which I am interpreting as shells that  
do work that is not the result of me using the shell.  So, if I were  
to alias rm to mv for example, and some app called rm, in reality, it  
would mv the file. I want to prevent stepping on the assumptions of  
other apps, correct?

I think I even went to extra effort to make this happen as  
my .bash_profile:
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
         source ~/.bashrc
fi

Sounds to me, like the correct course of action is to put my custom  
shell aliases and settings in ~/.bash_profile, that will get read on  
start, but then no further reading is done.  I then need to  
source .profile which is the file that MacPorts reads.

This brings up a question, if the .bash* files do not cascade, and  
stop after finding your local one, how is it that MacPorts suggests to  
use .profile, as that will never get read?

Any suggestions on how to be clean about this, I would love to know,  
this has bothered me for ages.

On a side note, I am doing this:
export LSCOLORS=dxfxcxdxbxegedabagacad
Which has never worked for me on a non darwin OS.  Is that the wrong  
way to do it, are there more appropriate ways to do coloring?  I think  
having this in .bashrc actually hurt me ones, as MacPorts saw either:
	export CLICOLOR=1 or export CLICOLOR_FORCE=1
and did not like it for some reason, that was here http://archive.netbsd.se/?ml=macports-dev&a=2009-05&t=10790101 
  but I do not seem to recall whether I solved it or just removed the  
setting temporarily.

I know this is a smidge off topic, but MacPorts does suggest to use  
a .profile, and I hope you guys can help me figure out the correct  
usage.  Bash man pages imply the first user file is read, then no more  
reading is done.

Thank you
-- 
Scott * If you contact me off list replace talklists@ with scott@ *