[Distutils] [Python-Dev] How we can get rid of eggs for 2.6 and beyond

[Floris Bruynooghe]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 11:21:49AM -0500, skip at pobox.com wrote:
> 
>     Joachim> I think, the uninstall should _not_ 'rm -rf' but only 'rm' the
>     Joachim> files (and 'rmdir' directories, but not recursively) that it
>     Joachim> created, and that have not been modified in the meantime (after
>     Joachim> the installation). 
> 
> That's not sufficient.  Suppose file C (e.g. /usr/local/etc/mime.types) is
> in both packages A and B.
> 
>     Install A - this will create C
>     Install B - this might overwrite C, saving a copy, or it might retain
>                 A's copy.

An install should never overwrite an existing file.  The sane thing is
to fail installing B by default (dpkg does this for example).  An
option to override this might be useful though.

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