[Distutils] Removing Packages

[Thomas Heller]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal@lemburg.com>
To: <HoumanG@ActiveState.com>
Cc: "'distutils-sig'" <distutils-sig@python.org>
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2001 8:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Distutils] Removing Packages


> Houman G wrote:
> > 
> > As far as I know Distutils does not have an 'uninstall command' (unless you
> > are using the Windows installer for installing packages), nor there is
> > standard way of removing packages. I was wondering if someone has come up
> > with a mechanism for removing packages, or if there is a Distutils command
> > for doing that.
> 
> The Windows doesn't do uninstall either... at least not yet.
> 
> As for the rest of distutils, I think it would be a good idea to
> have distutils store information about which packages and files
> were installed in a database much like RPM does. To simplify things
> we could start with a pickled dictionary in a standard place, e.g.
> as file distutils.db in the standard installation location.
> 
> I'd suggest to store objects in this dictionary to be able to
> easily upgrade the format. It should be indexed by package name
> for simplicity and since this will be the most used query form.

Michael Muller submitted a 'Package Meta Information Patch' back
in december 1998. There was a lively discussion about this patch
starting in jan 1999, also the data-format has been discussed.
Executable python code was suggested, also ConfigParser format.

Perhaps we should read this again, I cannot remember the conclusion.

Thomas