Bundler docs - man page says default path is `.bundle`

[lfdebrux]

Describe the problem as clearly as you can

The man page for bundle config says that the default path for Bundled gems is .bundle for Bundler 4.

However, this is not the case, I think it was planned to be but then was delayed until Bundler 5 (according to #8867).

Did you try upgrading rubygems & bundler?

Yes, and I can see that this issue is still present in the main branch, see

rubygems/lib/bundler/man/bundle-config.1.ronn

Lines 250 to 259 in 7288145

	* `path` (`BUNDLE_PATH`):
	The location on disk where all gems in your bundle will be located regardless
	of `$GEM_HOME` or `$GEM_PATH` values. Bundle gems not found in this location
	will be installed by `bundle install`. When not set, Bundler install by
	default to a `.bundle` directory relative to repository root in Bundler 4,
	and to the default system path (`Gem.dir`) before Bundler 4. That means that
	before Bundler 4, Bundler shares this location with Rubygems, and `gem
	install ...` will have gems installed in the same location and therefore,
	gems installed without `path` set will show up by calling `gem list`. This
	will not be the case in Bundler 4.

Post steps to reproduce the problem

Run man bundler-config, or go to https://bundler.io/man/bundle-config.1.html

Which command did you run?

I was looking at https://bundler.io/man/bundle-config.1.html

What were you expecting to happen?

I was expecting Bundler to install bundled gems to a .bundle folder, having read the documentation on the website about Bundler 4, so was preparing to raise an issue saying that it wasn't, but then found that it's not supposed to install to .bundle until Bundler 5.

What happened instead?

Replace this with the actual result you got. Paste the output of your command here.

$ bundle config --help
... snip ...
       •   path (BUNDLE_PATH): The location on disk where all gems in your bundle will be located regardless of $GEM_HOME or $GEM_PATH values. Bundle gems not found in this
           location will be installed by bundle install. When not set, Bundler install by default to a .bundle directory relative to repository root in Bundler 4, and to the
           default system path (Gem.dir) before Bundler 4. That means that before Bundler 4, Bundler shares this location with Rubygems, and gem install ... will have gems
           installed in the same location and therefore, gems installed without path set will show up by calling gem list. This will not be the case in Bundler 4.
... snip ...

If not included with the output of your command, run bundle env and paste the output below

Environment

Bundler       4.0.16
  Platforms   ruby, arm64-darwin-25
Ruby          4.0.5p0 (2026-05-20 revision 64336ffd0ee9e1f4c05891695a3d7b49cb709721) [arm64-darwin-25]
  Full Path   ~/.rbenv/versions/4.0.5/bin/ruby
  Config Dir  ~/.rbenv/versions/4.0.5/etc
RubyGems      4.0.10
  Gem Home    ~/.rbenv/versions/4.0.5/lib/ruby/gems/4.0.0
  Gem Path    ~/.gem/ruby/4.0.0:~/.rbenv/versions/4.0.5/lib/ruby/gems/4.0.0
  User Home   /Users/laurence.debruxelles
  User Path   ~/.gem/ruby/4.0.0
  Bin Dir     ~/.rbenv/versions/4.0.5/bin
Tools
  Git         2.55.0
  RVM         not installed
  rbenv       rbenv 1.3.2
  chruby      not installed

Bundler Build Metadata

Timestamp  2026-07-15
Git SHA    fc18079dba

Bundler settings

simulate_version
  Set for the current user (~/.bundle/config): "4"