[task #16287] Remove (clean or uninstall) a specific package automatically

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

Follow-up Comment #4, task #16287 (project reproduce):

Let me see if I can clarify Pedram's suggestion. Pedram, please correct me if
I am wrong below:

In the first case of uninstalling, this is how I interpreted Pedram's
suggestion:


./project configure --uninstall=PROGRAM1,PROGRAM2,...,PROGRAM_N


Everything else would be the same as before, except that we can run 'make
uninstall' instead of 'make install' within the build rule and to remove that
program's 'version-info/' file.

In the case of cleaning, this is how I interpreted Pedram's suggestion: if the
user just wants to "clean" the information of a software (that goes into the
software acknowledgements; for example when they update a software, which will
keep previous versions in 'version-info/'), the user can run this:


./project configure --cleaninfo=PROGRAM1,PROGRAM2,...,PROGRAM_N


The clean option is pretty easy to implement and is well defined and robust.
However, the uninstall option is pretty tricky! Here are some caveats off the
top of my head:
* Any software that is built with Autoconf+Automake will have a 'make
uninstall' option. But there are some software using GNU Autotools, but do
some funny things manually when installing, that Autoconf can't recognize (and
thus can't remove with 'make uninstall'). The same goes for CMake based
software.
* Some C programs exist that don't use GNU Autotools or CMake! They usually
also don't have 'make uninstall'!
* Boud already gave an example of the frustration with Python.

So even if we do implement the first option, there will be many caveats that
will annoy users for some poorly-written software (which are a lot in the
high-level/other-langauge packages!).


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