Node:Uninstall, Previous:DJGPP Fatware, Up:Getting DJGPP

4.7 How to uninstall a DJGPP package.

Q: How can I uninstall a certain package?

Q: How can I install a newer version of some package without leaving traces of the older installation?

A: The *.mft files in the manifest subdirectory hold the lists of all the files included in every package you install. For example, when you unzip gcc2951b.zip, it puts a file called gcc2951b.mft into the manifest subdirectory. The easiest way to remove all those files is to use the *.mft files as response files to a command which deletes files. For example:

  rm -f @manifest/gcc2951b.mft

The rm program is part of the GNU Fileutils package, available as v2gnu/fil316b.zip from the usual DJGPP FTP sites.

Some packages might not have the *.mft files. In general, you should complain about such cases; however, if a package installs entirely into its own directory tree, you can uninstall it by simply removing that tree:

 rm -rf package-dir

(The -r option tells rm to recursively remove all subdirectories of the named directory package-dir).

When you install a new version of a package, it is best to uninstall the previous version first, like in the above example, and then install the new one. Otherwise, you might leave behind old files that the new version doesn't overwrite, and that will cause problems due to incompatibilities with the new version.