Re: Feature request: rm should implement option -p, --parents

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello,

Guido Flohr writes:
> 
> The case where the directory part is not known is quite frequent imho. 
> I configured a random GNU package (in this case gettext from the current 
> git sources), configured it with "--prefix=/tmp/my_gettext", then 
> "make", "make install", and "make uninstall", and finally ran find over 
> the directory /tmp/my_gettext.  It finds 194 directories and one regular 
> file (/tmp/my_gettext/share/info/dir, but that is a nuisance of its 
> own).  So not even packages that use GNU autoconf clean up after 
> themselves.

There is a reason it is not done: "make uninstall" cannot know, from
looking at the installed tree alone, which set of directories existed
before "make install" and which were created as part of it.  Of those
that existed before, the user might want them to be kept, for various
reasons: they could have special permissions or ownership, or their
presence could be required by some other program that needs them.
The former (existence before "make install") could be somehow recorded
at install time (e.g., in the build tree), but the latter (shared-ness
between packages) really cannot be discovered automatically.

HTH (just as a data point to this issue; I don't intend to argue about
the merits of rm -p).

Cheers,
Ralf