From: Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@...>
Date: 2006-04-18T14:19:39+09:00
Subject: Re: feature request: "make uninstall"


On Apr 18, 2006, at 1:07 AM, John M. Gabriele wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I think it would be occasionally very useful if Ruby's
> makefile had a make uninstall target. From what little I
> know of the automake/autoconf tools, this make not be a
> very difficult target to add.
>
> I realize that there are alternatives like GNU stow,
> but have never used them, since most software I install
> in /usr/local usually has an uninstall target.
>
> I also see that it's probably not too terribly difficult
> to sift through those /usr/local directories manually
> uninstalling an older, un-needed (or possibly botched up)
> Ruby installation. But, why not make that into a simple
> "make uninstall" instead?
>
> A "make uninstall" also can save you if you mis-
> configure and then install, and then want to back out
> cleanly.
>
> As an aside: In general, I think that one measure of
> how folks gauge a piece of software is how easy it is
> to uninstall. IMO, making it easy for your users to
> remove your software from their system shows that
> you're confident they will generally tend not to use
> such functionality. :)
>
> Thanks,
> ---John
>
>
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I realize that your asking for a feature that has its uses but I'd  
like to offer you an alternative solution.

I will often use a prefix when building from source, especially since  
I rarely build packages from source. So for instance when i  
configured ruby I did

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/ruby

this has the advantage of uninstall being simply

rm -rf /usr/local/ruby

The other advantage is if I need ruby 1.6 or 1.9 I can install it  
alongside 1.8

e.g.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/ruby16

It's not so hard to add /usr/local/ruby/bin to your path