[Distutils] What is needed by an uninstall command to be useful ?

[chris]

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 10:33 AM, David Cournapeau
<david at ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>   An uninstall command is a long-time wanted feature of distutils. I was
> wondering why it was not implemented: what does it need to do to be useful ?

I've submitted a patch for an uninstall feature here:

http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue21

Currently it works by creating an installed_files.log file in an egg
on install. This file is used during uninstall (-r option) to remove
all files associated with an egg. If an egg was installed before this
patch was applied, the only things missed will be external scripts.

It will also do some dependency checking. If the package being removed
is depended upon by something else, it will warn the user (showing
what needs that package). If the package being removed has a
dependency not needed by anything else, it presents the user with the
option of removing that dependency as well. Also, entries from
easy_install.pth are removed.

If have the time and inclination, try it out and let me know what you think. :)

-Chris