Re: [Plplot-devel] install now puts files in /usr/lib regardless of prefix

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:

> * Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2003-02-18 08:52]:
>
> > and once you have made such an install it is non-trivial to un-install.
> > (With my normal prefix of /usr/local/plplot_at,
> >
> > rm -rf /usr/local/plplot_at/*
>
> Wrong.  Just call "make uninstall" and all the files that have been
> installed (regardless if under $prefix or not) are removed.
>
> Automake is great.

Yes it is, but it is also far from perfect so to encourage users to use
uninstall is just plain wrong unless they don't mind if it screws up.

First, the automake documentation specifically spreads some doubt about
uninstall

"Note that uninstall' is not meant as a replacement for a real packaging
tool."

That doesn't sound like it is a high maintenance priority with the autotools
developers. Also even if autotools uninstall is completely bug-free it is
not clear that uninstall will actually work properly if you have gone
outside the autotools paradigm.

Sorry, Rafael, but I like the KISS principle so I am going to stick with

rm -rf

and a special prefix for each of my handful of different tarball installs.
Of course if a real packaging tool is used like debs or rpms I am happy to
go with those since their package uninstalls are heavily tested by many
users.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________