Re: shall `make uninstall' remove directories?

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Peter" == Peter Eisentraut <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Peter> Might part of that perceived uselessness come from the fact
Peter> that it doesn't remove the directories?

I don't think so.  I think that one big reason is that you have to
keep (the skeleton of) the build tree around for "uninstall" to work.
The even bigger reason is that people have already evolved better
systems: for production use, use a package system; for one-off
experimental use, make a new directory and use that as --prefix --
then "uninstall" becomes a simple "rm -rf".

Peter> The world would surely be a better place if every package
Peter> supported a proper uninstall target. Perhaps even a make
Peter> manifest that writes the name of each installed file to stdout
Peter> -- there's your package management.

I don't think we should go this direction.  There are plenty of
package management systems already, ranging from the ad hoc (new
--prefix) to the lightweight (stow) to the full-blow (RPM or Debian).
We really need fewer, not more, packaging systems.

Tom