M.Hockings wrote:
FYI, RPM does provide the uninstall option. read the man page. ( rpm -e <package> )Bryan Encina wrote:
Personally I find this all very interesting as before reading this thread I didn't even know that there was a spec about where to put things! Here are a few randomish thoughts.
On Windows you will see the typical installer ask to put a new program
at "C:\Program Files\some-vendor-name" but you can change this to
"e:\where-ever-ya-want" and the program will still install. However it
now won't match the documentation -- does this confuse users too? (ans:
yes, even though they chose to put it there)
I don't claim to be an expert on this (or anything at all), but isn't the
reason that Windows can get away with doing this and still having
plugins/addons install correctly because of the registry, one central place
where system wide settings can be looked up? AFAIK there isn't anything
like that in linux (not saying there should be, either) so that's possibly
why installing into non-standard places can make installing/upgrading addons
a little harder.
Yes, this is true, but I have also had to help resolve problems with customers where the registry was corrupt or out of sync due to system failure, user editing, deletion of files without uninstall, etc. Thousands of entries if you use an msi installer. There is a lot to be said for a *simple* ordered way of putting things in the file system (IMHO). That is, I would presume that if a vendor supplies an RPM install then the same vendor should know how to update or remove the install as well.
Also, for a user compiled/installed package the Makefile contains the uninstall option normally.
Install/uninstall paths are included in the rpm spec file and in the Makefile. Once the package has been installed the rpm database contains the information needed to uninstall it (and manual deletion of files does not 'break' the uninstall process).
The thing I hate about packages on (that other OS) is that if files/directories are deleted and the registry entries remain you usually CANNOT use the 'add/remove programs' control panel to clean up the registry.
