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in reply to howto uninstall a package/module

There is no 'real' way to uninstall packages with CPAN, but there is a clean method described in the CPAN FAQ...

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Re^2: howto uninstall a package/module
by ForgotPasswordAgain (Priest) on Mar 06, 2006 at 08:49 UTC
    Wouldn't it make sense to add this as an `uninstall' command to the CPAN shell?

      I think the guys that make CPANPLUS have done exactly that...

      Problem is that 'install' basically just runs a script, and there's no guarantee that removing all the files listed in the packlist completely removes/uninstalls the package...

      Providing an uninstall command might lead users to believe that the results is a 'clean' uninstall, even though that may not be the case. (Nor can it be checked whether it happened).

      My personally prefered way to handle perl-packages is to build them, and package them in an RPM. That way, the perl-package can be easily installed and removed using rpm... This preference has probably arrisen because of my sysadmin background; creating one rpm and placing it in a yum or apt repository that all my machines automatically update from is simple and safe way to maintain identical versions on all systems, and allows kickstart installations that include all required perl-packages...

      There are various ways to create an rpm package out of a CPAN module. I usually use cpan2rpm. But IIRC, CPANPLUS also includes support for tools like this, and would thereby combine CPAN's power and the (admin) easy of rpm's (or other package styles like .deb).