Uninst 0.1.7 Copyright (c) 1999-2005 Jozef Kosoru
Released under GPL 2.0
Uninst is a simply tool for creating uninstall scripts. It scans file system (or its part) before and after installation of some new software and automatically creates uninstall script from differences of these file lists.
- INTRODUCTION
- Sometimes you want to install some program and you don't have *.rpm or *.deb package of them - so you must use *.tar archive. But this alternative has a big disadvantage - it is a uninstallation. This can be available through 'make uninstall' but very often you don't have this possibility. A very simple and safe solution of this problem is to use uninst. Uninst make uninstallation 'bash' script so you can easily remove every file belongs to the installed application.
- REQUIREMENTS
-
- libc5 or glibc2
- libstdc++
- GNU 'ls' in /bin with -Q option support
- INSTALLATION
- In order to compile and install uninst on your system, type the following in the base directory of the uninst distribution:
% ./configure
% make
change as `root` and type:
% make install
- UNINSTALLATION
- Type the following in the base directory of the uninst distribution:
% make uninstall
- USAGE
- see 'uninst --help' or uninst-doc.html
CONFIGURATION FILE:
Program creates configuration file in ~/.uninstrc
You can define following variables in it:
FLAGS= - add here often used flags (for example: FLAGS= --verbose) TEMP= - set temp directory (default= /tmp)
UNINSTAL= - set directory where uninstall scripts will be stored (default= ./)
Also there you can define aliases of paths like: @all=/opt/kde;/usr;/bin;/sbin;/etc;/var
- EXAMPLE
- $ make $ uninst b @kde -o kpackage $ make install $ uninst a Uninstall script named 'kpackage' will be created. (alias @kde must be properly defined in confFile)
BUGS AND DISADVANTAGES:
- uninst does not scan directories which are linked to the scanned path with a symbolic link ( it is disadvantage and advantage too)
- sometimes can be extraneous files added to the uninstall script which don't belong to the installed application such as system logs and other files created during installation (to minimize this danger run 'make install' immediately after 'uninst b' and then directly 'uninst a') It seems to be always a good idea to look at automatically created uninstall script and check it.
- uninst does not look for changed sizes of files, so if installed software need to change some configuration files - these changes are not included in uninstall script
- scanning of a hard disk takes a long time
- EPILOGUE
- Please, send any hints, bug reports or ideas to <jozef.kosoru@pobox.sk>