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.shellcheckrc: shell=unknown directive is silently ignored

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
55/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
haskell, shell
Domain
cli, devtools

Research direction

Start by tracing how .shellcheckrc directives are parsed and validated, then compare the shell=unknown handling with the existing # shellcheck shell=csh and -s csh behavior shown in the issue. Reproduce the silent ignore with the provided --rcfile command and locate the relevant parser tests. Done means an unknown shell in .shellcheckrc produces a useful diagnostic instead of being silently ignored.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

For bugs with existing features
  • Rule Id (if any, e.g. SC1000): SC1103 or SC1134
  • My shellcheck version (shellcheck --version or "online"): v0.11.0
  • The rule's wiki page does not already cover this (e.g. https://shellcheck.net/wiki/SC2086)
  • I tried on https://www.shellcheck.net/ and verified that this is still a problem on the latest commit
Here's a snippet or screenshot that shows the problem:
$ shellcheck --rcfile=<(<<< shell=csh) /dev/null
Here's what shellcheck currently says:

Nothing

Here's what I wanted or expected to see:
In /proc/self/fd/12 line 1:
shell=csh
^-- SC1103 (error): This shell type is unknown. Use e.g. sh or bash.

See

$ shellcheck - <<< '# shellcheck shell=csh'

In - line 1:
# shellcheck shell=csh
                   ^-- SC1103 (error): This shell type is unknown. Use e.g. sh or bash.

For more information:
  https://www.shellcheck.net/wiki/SC1103 -- This shell type is unknown. Use e...
$ echo $?
1
$ shellcheck -s csh /dev/null
Unknown shell: csh
$ echo $?
4

$ shellcheck --rcfile=<(<<< external-sources=1) -s sh - <<< '. foo'

In - line 1:
. foo
^-- SC1134 (error): Failed to process /proc/self/fd/12, line 1:  Fix any mentioned problems and try again.
  ^-^ SC1091 (info): Not following: foo was not specified as input (see shellcheck -x).

For more information:
  https://www.shellcheck.net/wiki/SC1134 -- Failed to process /proc/self/fd/1...
  https://www.shellcheck.net/wiki/SC1091 -- Not following: foo was not specif...
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