[racket] today's DrRacket problem

An alternate, quick fix is to use the Control Panel/System Preferences
to change the date on your computer to yesterday's date. Then start
DrRacket. Then, once DrRacket is running, change the date back to the
correct one.

--- nadeem


On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Matthias Felleisen
<matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear Racket users,
>
> Many of you noticed that DrRacket v5.2.1 refused to launch today, March 26.
> We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience.
>
> The problem is due to a so-called "Easter egg", which is a visual surprise
> that one developer builds into the code for the others and our users -- a
> tradition going back to the early days of our project. The bug affects only
> DrRacket, no other Racket software.
>
> As far as version 5.2.1 is concerned, it will disappear tomorrow, but it
> will return later this year.  For the upcoming release -- due out before
> the next "easter egg" date -- we will either install much more reliable
> test methods for the Easter eggs or we will remove them entirely.
>
> More immediately, we offer the following workarounds for the DrRacket bug:
>
> * Revert to version 5.2:
>
>   http://download.racket-lang.org/racket-v5.2.html
>
> * In your current installation of 5.2.1, navigate to the following folder:
>
>     collects -> drracket -> private
>
>  remove the file
>
>     drracket-normal.rkt
>
>  and replace it with the corrected copy at
>
>     http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/fix/drracket-normal.rkt
>
> * For those of you with commandline tool experience, download a Racket
>  patch file from
>
>    http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/fix/patch-for-v5.2.1.plt
>
>  navigate in your shell to the folder with the 5.2.1 executables, and
>  install the patch with
>
>    ./raco setup -A ....
>
>  where .... specifies a path to the downloaded file.
>
> As much as we prepare and test these Easter eggs, software obeys only one
> law: what can go wrong will go wrong eventually. We definitely should have
> been more careful.
>
> Once again, we regret any problems we caused you today
>
> -- Matthias Felleisen, for PLT
>
>
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