Re: uninstall monitor the installation (was: Problems: tty fonts; latex mode; xemacs -nw; xemacs.21.4.22)
Uwe Brauer writes:
The other reason is to uninstall it later if needed. Would it be hard
to provide an uninstall option in our makefile(in)?
Yes, it would be hard. First, Makefiles are a terrible way to provide
uninstall. For example, both Emacs and XEmacs provide etags. How do
you know the etags in /usr/bin is yours? Really, you need global
information about other packages. Second, it would require careful
maintenance basically forever.
This is the first of three reasons why almost no large application
provides uninstall in the Makefile. The second is that package
managers do the job *much* better. The third is that
--prefix=/usr/local/this-xemacs-only is easy to do and requires no
uninstall command (rm -rf $prefix works fine).
In my understanding automake provides this.
Maybe it does, but (a) I'm sure it doesn't take into account issues
like multiple packages trying to install the same file, and (b)
XEmacs's build process isn't automake-compatible. I guess it would
take substantial effort to make it so. I think I can contribute more
effectively by doing something else for XEmacs for the foreseeable
future.:-) But as usual, "patches welcome!" ;-)
Steve
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