[racket-dev] scribble -- an ncurses game

Jon Rafkind wrote at 12/13/2011 06:27 PM:
> A user of mine alerted me to the fact that 'scribble' is a crossword puzzle similar to scrabble. He had it installed in ubuntu so when he typed make in my source tree he ended up playing a game instead of generating documentation.
>    

Given how massive Debian (and, therefore, Ubuntu) is, it's not too 
surprising that something is already called "Scribble", but it's a pain.

I don't know what PLT wants to do about this, but a Debian maintainer 
will probably eventually make the call if PLT doesn't first.

Here's a Debian package name search, showing multiple Scribbles:

http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=scribble

Here's where it looks like that "scribble" executable is coming from, as 
"/usr/games/scribble", from an optional games package of the current 
Debian stable release (unless Ubuntu put it elsewhere):

http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/all/scribble/filelist
http://packages.ubuntu.com/oneiric/all/scribble/filelist

Based on past experience, I think that, if a Debian package maintainer 
is trying to package Racket, and they see that there is already a 
"scribble" executable, they will rename Racket's "scribble" executable 
to something else, like "racket-scribble".

Two workarounds for this particular user:

1. Edit the appropriate shell initialization file, such as "~/.bashrc", 
to put the directory containing Racket's "scribble" ahead of 
"/usr/games" in the "PATH" environment variable.  ("/usr/games" should 
be at the end anyway, if it appears at all, just for good practice.)

2. For Makefiles and build scripts, put the full file path to the 
desired "scribble" executable.  (You would want to do this anyway, if 
your app has an official Racket version is currently is tested with, and 
you put your Racket version numbers in your Racket install tree 
directory names.)

-- 
http://www.neilvandyke.org/