[LAU] Stow! (was Re: need help uninstalling non installed from source)

[Ken Restivo]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 07:13:15PM -1000, Joel Roth wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 05:48:54PM +0100, Peder Hedlund wrote:
> > Quoting Atte <atte at youmail.dk>:
> > 
> > >I wanna use non from kxstudio instead of my compiled version. How do I
> > >completely remove everything installed by hand? Here's what I did and
> > >the result:
> > >
> > >atte at skagen:~/software/shared/non$ sudo ./waf uninstall
> > >Waf: Entering directory `/mnt/data/atte/medium/software/non/build'
> > >- remove /usr/local/share/icons/hicolor/128x128/apps/non-mixer.png
> > >- remove /usr/local/share/pixmaps/non-mixer/icon-256x256.png
> > 
> > I always compile everything with --prefix=/opt/programname-version (e.g.
> > /opt/jack-0.124.1) and then use stow (ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/stow , I use
> > v1.3.3) to populate /usr/local with symlinks.
> > The command for that would be 'stow -d  /opt/ -t  /usr/local  jack-0.124.1'
> > 
> > To uninstall just run stow again with the -D flag added and 'rm -rf
> > /opt/jack-0.124.1'
> > 
> > This way it's also easy to install and test a shiny new version of a program
> > while still keeping the old and trusted version in case the new one is crap.
> > Just skip the rm-part.
> 
> I'll just add that the Gobo Linux distribution is built on a
> technique similar to stow, using symlinks that allow
> multiple versions to be installed, and keeping all files
> for each applications separate.
> 
> The package manager and administration utilities for Gobo
> are written in shell, which makes for interesting reading.
> 

For the past few years I've used nix for handling things that Debian just can't seem to keep up with.

Nix is pretty cool, it's uses immutability, like Git or CouchBase or Clojure. Beats doing a ton of source builds in /usr/local or /opt.

-ken