The “out of the box” apache on Ubuntu comes with a “feature” called “javascript-common” enabled. I haven’t got much idea what this wretched thing does, other than screw me up. I remember now that I had to struggle this some time back on Cinnamon. Now I am in Ohio trying to get something running on a box there, and tearing my hair out once again over the same issue.

This feature adds an Alias directive that takes the directory “/javascript” and sends it off to /usr/share/javascript. So if you are foolish enough to have a directory in your website called “/javascript” (and who would ever dream of putting their javascript files in a directory called javascript, after all) it will fail.

The directory /usr/share/javascript has some nice stuff in it, including jquery, and I guess it is a nice convenience feature for some people. But am I the only one who things it is crazy for a distribution to do something that breaks websites that have a commonly named directory like javascript!?