Unbuilding from Source ;)

Hello,

I've only built from source a few times before as I normally use RPM but I'm getting sick of trying to track down RPMs. So I was just wondering, isn't building from source messy? I mean, what happens when you need to uninstall the program? Or is there a way to cleanly uninstall?

Thanks... :D

I know with some source packs you can state

Code:

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make uninstall

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instaed of

Code:

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make install

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dylunio

Is there a way to tell if that make uninstall option is available before you make install?

And you have to keep the configured source around to uninstall at a later time, right?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Audax321

Is there a way to tell if that make uninstall option is available before you make install?

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read the file README or INSTALL that comes in the directory with the source.

You could also try some source-based package management tool, such as spk ( http://spk.sourceforge.net ).

IMO installing pre built packages is what's messy. Building from source gives you the options to customize how it is built and where it installs to, installing a RPM gives you none of that (or very few in some cases). Mostly this is accomplished by passing options to configure, but sometimes editing the Makefile a little bit is what it takes. Not all options have a 'make uninstall', but you can find out with the command 'make -n uninstall'. The -n options means print everything, but don't actually do it, so if it does some stuff at least you know it works. Otherwise, you'll have to delete everything manually, check 'make -n install' to see where it puts everything, these are what must be deleted.

I compile my programs like this:

./configure
make
checkinstall -S -y

Somebody sayd me that if you do packages from programs what are made of sources you can uninstall them with any pgkmanager.

(That's why checkinstall instead of make install)

Or in the case of Gentoo's portage system, it takes care of the cleanup for you- saves loads of time.