How can I de-install a Perl module installed via cpan

Question

I am using Perl running in user space  not installed via root  and installing modules via the command-line cpan  I would like to know if there is a simple way to remove a module without having to do a lot of work deleting individual files   I searched for this question on the internet and found some answers  but the answers I ve found seem to either discuss using the Perl package manager  specific for Microsoft Windows   otherwise operating-system specific  BSDpan   suggesting using cpanplus  which I ve had several bad experiences with   or ended by pointing to a dead link as follows  http   www cpan org misc cpan-faq html How delete Perl modules   My question is specifically whether there is a clean way to remove a module installed via cpan

User · Answer

Since at the time of installing of any module it mainly put corresponding  pm files in respective directories   So if you want to remove module only for some testing purpose or temporarily best is to find the path where module is stored using perldoc -l  lt MODULE gt  and then simply move the module from there to some other location   This approach can also be tried as a more permanent solution but i am not aware of any negative consequences as i do it mainly for testing

User · Answer

As a general rule  there is not a specific  uninstall  mechanism that comes with CPAN modules  But you might try make uninstall in the original directory the module unpacked into  this is often under  root  cpan or    cpan   as some packages do contain this directive in their install script    However  since you ve installed modules into a local  non-root  library directory  you also have the option of blowing away this entire directory and reinstalling everything else that you want to keep    A lot of the time you can simply get away with removing the A B pm file  for the A  B module  from your perllib -- that will at least render the module unusable   Most modules also contain a list of files to be installed  called a  manifest    so if you can find that  you ll know which files you can delete   However  none of these approaches will address any modules that were installed as dependencies  There s no good  automated  way of knowing if something else is dependent on that module  so you ll have to uninstall it manually as well once you re sure   The difficulty in uninstalling modules is one reason why many Perl developers are moving towards using a revision control system to keep track of installations -- e g  see the article by brian d foy as a supplement to his upcoming book that discusses using git for package management

User · Answer

There are scripts on CPAN which attempt to uninstall modules    pm-uninstall perlrocks   ExtUtils  Packlist shows sample module removing code  modrm

User · Answer

Install App  cpanminus from CPAN  use  cpan App  cpanminus for this   Type cpanm --uninstall Module  Name  note the  m   to uninstall the module with cpanminus    This should work

User · Answer

Update 2013  This code is obsolescent  Upvote bsb s late-coming answer instead     I don t need to uninstall modules often  but the  packlist file based approach has never failed me so far   use 5 010  use ExtUtils  Installed qw    use ExtUtils  Packlist qw     die  Usage   0 Module  Name Module  Name n  unless  ARGV   for my  mod   ARGV        my  inst   ExtUtils  Installed- gt new       foreach my  item  sort  inst- gt files  mod              say  removing  item           unlink  item or warn  could not remove  item     n              my  packfile    inst- gt packlist  mod - gt packlist file      print  removing  packfile n       unlink  packfile or warn  could not remove  packfile     n

User · Answer

You can t  There isn t a feature in my CPAN client to do such a thing  We were talking about how we might do something like that at this weekend s Perl QA Workshop  but it s generally hard for all the reasons that Ether mentioned

[perl] How can I de-install a Perl module installed via `cpan`?

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