Description of the bug:

With a .bazelrc of (I'm using the failure to load the downloader config file to see what is configuration applied):

common --enable_platform_specific_config
common --downloader_config=common_downloader.cfg
common:linux --downloader_config=linux_downloader.cfg
common:macos --downloader_config=macos_downloader.cfg

I get the following output on a Linux machine:

 % bazel test ...
ERROR: Failed to parse downloader config: Unable to find downloader config file common_downloader.cfg
 % bazel test --config=linux ...
ERROR: Failed to parse downloader config: Unable to find downloader config file linux_downloader.cfg
 % bazel test --enable_platform_specific_config ...
ERROR: Failed to parse downloader config: Unable to find downloader config file linux_downloader.cfg

This seems to conflict with the documentation that indicates that --enable_platform_specific_config (specified it in the .bazelrc) is equivalent to applying --config=linux. (And also in this .bazelrc documentation)

Note that if I remove the common --downloader_config=common_downloader.cfg line, it does seem to take the common:linux configuration. It's difficult for me to understand what is going on here. Maybe there is a conflict between common and common:linux when no command-line arguments are specified? It's confusing to me that the behavior is different when specifying --enable_platform_specific_config in .bazelrc and in command-line.

Which category does this issue belong to?

Client, Core

What's the simplest, easiest way to reproduce this bug? Please provide a minimal example if possible.

https://github.com/chrisirhc/bazel-repro contains a reproduction.

Which operating system are you running Bazel on?

Linux

What is the output of bazel info release?

release 8.4.1

If bazel info release returns development version or (@non-git), tell us how you built Bazel.

No response

What's the output of git remote get-url origin; git rev-parse HEAD ?

If this is a regression, please try to identify the Bazel commit where the bug was introduced with bazelisk --bisect.

No response

Have you found anything relevant by searching the web?

No response

Any other information, logs, or outputs that you want to share?

No response