What s the opposite of make install i e how do you uninstall a library in Linux

Question

While running     configure --prefix  mingw    on a MinGW MSYS system for a library I had previously run      configure --prefix  mingw  amp  amp  make  amp  amp  make install     I came across this message      WARNING  A version of the Vamp plugin SDK is already installed  Expect worries and sorrows if you install a new version without removing the old one first    Continuing    This had me worried  What s the opposite of  make install   i e  how is a library uninstalled in Linux  Will  make clean  do the job  or are there other steps involved

User · Answer

How to uninstall after  make install   Method  1  make uninstall   Step 1  You only need to follow this step if you ve deleted altered the build directory in any way  Download and make make install using the exact same procedure as you did before    Step 2  try make uninstall   cd  SOURCE DIR  sudo make uninstall   If this succeeds you are done  If you re paranoid you may also try the steps of  Method  3  to make sure make uninstall didn t miss any files   Method  2  checkinstall -- only for debian based systems   Overview of the process  In debian based systems  e g  Ubuntu  you can create a  deb package very easily by using a tool named checkinstall  You then install the  deb package  this will make your debian system realize that the all parts of your package have been indeed installed  and finally uninstall it to let your package manager properly cleanup your system    Step by step  sudo apt-get -y install checkinstall cd  SOURCE DIR  sudo checkinstall   At this point checkinstall will prompt for a package name  Enter something a bit descriptive and note it because you ll use it in a minute  It will also prompt for a few more data that you can ignore  If it complains about the version not been acceptable just enter something reasonable like 1 0  When it completes you can install and finally uninstall   sudo dpkg -i  PACKAGE NAME YOU ENTERED  sudo dpkg -r  PACKAGE NAME YOU ENTERED   Method  3  install manifest txt   If a file install manifest txt exists in your source dir it should contain the filenames of every single file that the installation created   So first check the list of files and their mod-time    cd  SOURCE DIR  sudo xargs -I   stat -c   z  n        lt  install manifest txt   You should get zero errors and the mod-times of the listed files should be on or after the installation time  If all is OK you can delete them in one go    cd  SOURCE DIR  mkdir deleted-by-uninstall sudo xargs -I   mv -t deleted-by-uninstall       lt  install manifest txt   User Merlyn Morgan-Graham however has a serious notice regarding this method that you should keep in mind  copied here verbatim    Watch out for files that might also have been installed by other packages  Simply deleting these files       could break the other packages    That s the reason that we ve created the deleted-by-uninstall dir and moved files there instead of deleting them      99  of this post existed in other answers  I just collected everything useful in a  hopefully  easy to follow how-to and tried to give extra attention to important details  like quoting xarg arguments and keeping backups of deleted files

User · Answer

make clean removes any intermediate or output files from your source   build tree   However  it only affects the source   build tree  it does not touch the rest of the filesystem and so will not remove previously installed software   If you re lucky  running make uninstall will work   It s up to the library s authors to provide that  however  some authors provide an uninstall target  others don t   If you re not lucky  you ll have to manually uninstall it   Running make -n install can be helpful  since it will show the steps that the software would take to install itself but won t actually do anything   You can then manually reverse those steps

User · Answer

If sudo make uninstall is unavailable   In a Debian based system  instead of  or after   doing make install you can run sudo checkinstall to make a  deb file that gets automatically installed  You can then remove it using the system package manager  e g  apt synaptic aptitude dpkg   Checkinstall also supports creating other types of package  e g  RPM   See also http   community linuxmint com tutorial view 162 and some basic checkinstall usage and debian checkinstall package        If you re reading this after having installed with make install you can still follow the above instructions and do a dpkg -r  PACKAGE NAME YOU CHOSEN afterwards

User · Answer

Depending on how well the makefile configure script autofoo magic of the program in question is the following might solve your problem   make uninstall   The problem is that you should execute this on the source tree of the version you ve got installed and with exactly the same configuration that you used for installing

User · Answer

make clean generally only cleans built files in the directory containing the source code itself  and rarely touches any installed software   Makefiles generally don t contain a target for uninstallation -- you usually have to do that yourself  by removing the files from the directory into which they were installed  For example  if you built a program and installed it  using make install  into  usr local  you d want to look through  usr local bin   usr local libexec   usr local share man  etc   and remove the unwanted files  Sometimes a Makefile includes an uninstall target  but not always   Of course  typically on a Linux system you install software using a package manager  which is capable of uninstalling software  automagically

User · Answer

Make can tell you what it knows and what it will do  Suppose you have an  install  target  which executes commands like   cp  lt filelist gt   lt destdir gt     In your generic rules  add   uninstall    MAKEFLAGS    MAKE  -j1 -spinf   word 1   MAKEFILE LIST   install                   awk    cp   dest  NF  for  i NF  --i gt 0    print dest    i                      xargs rm -f   A similar trick can do a generic make clean

User · Answer

If you have a manifest file which lists all the files that were installed with make install you can run this command which I have from another answer    cat install manifest txt   xargs echo rm   sh   If you have sudo make install you will need to add a sudo to your uninstall    cat install manifest txt   xargs echo sudo rm   sh

User · Answer

Preamble  below may work or may not  this is all given as-is  you and only you are responsible person in case of some damage  data loss and so on  But I hope things go smooth   To undo make install I would do  and I did  this   Idea  check whatever script installs and undo this with simple bash script    Reconfigure your build dir to install to some custom dir  I usually do this  --prefix  PWD install  For CMake  you can go to your build dir  open CMakeCache txt  and fix CMAKE INSTALL PREFIX value  Install project to custom directory  just run make install again   Now we push from assumption  that make install script installs into custom dir just same contents you want to remove from somewhere else  usually  usr local   So  we need a script  3 1  Script should compare custom dir  with dir you want clean  I use this    anti-install sh  RM DIR  1 PRESENT DIR  2  echo  Remove files from  RM DIR  which are present in  PRESENT DIR   pushd  RM DIR  for fn in  find   -iname       do    echo  Checking  PRESENT DIR  fn       if test -f   PRESENT DIR  fn   then       First try this  and check whether things go plain     echo  rm  RM DIR  fn         Then uncomment this   but  check twice it works good to you         rm  RM DIR  fn   fi done  popd   3 2  Now just run this script  it will go dry-run   bash anti-install sh  lt dir you want to clean gt   lt custom installation dir gt    E g  You wan t to clean  usr local  and your custom installation dir is  user me llvm build install  then it would be  bash anti-install sh  usr local  user me llvm build install   3 3  Check log carefully  if commands are good to you  uncomment rm  RM DIR  fn and run it again  But stop  Did you really check carefully  May be check again   Source to instructions  https   dyatkovskiy com 2019 11 26 anti-make-install   Good luck

User · Answer

Make Make is the program that   s used to install the program that   s compiled from the source code  It   s not the Linux package manager so it doesn   t keep track of the files it installs  This makes it difficult to uninstall the files afterward  The Make Install command copies the built program and packages into the library directory and specified locations from the makefile  These locations can vary based on the examination that   s performed by the configure script  CheckInstall CheckInstall is the program that   s used to install or uninstall programs that are compiled from the source code  It monitors and copies the files that are installed using the make program  It also installs the files using the Linux package manager which allows it to be uninstalled like any regular package  The CheckInstall command is used to call the Make Install command  It monitors the files that are installed and creates a binary package from them  It also installs the binary package with the Linux package manager  Replace  quot source location deb quot  and  quot name quot  with your information from the Screenshot  Execute the following commands in the source package directory   Install CheckInstall sudo apt-get install checkinstall Run the Configure script sudo   configure Run the Make command sudo make Run CheckInstall sudo checkinstall Reinstall the package sudo dpkg --install --force-overwrite source location deb Remove the package sudo apt remove name  Here s an article article I wrote that covers the whole process with explanations

User · Answer

I know of few packages that support  make uninstall  but many more that support make install DESTDIR xxx  for staged installs   You can use this to create a package which you install instead of installing directly from the source  I had no luck with checkinstall but fpm works very well   This can also help you remove a package previously installed using make install  You simply force install your built package over the make installed one and then uninstall it   For example  I used this recently to deal with protobuf-3 3 0  On RHEL7   make install DESTDIR dest cd dest fpm -f -s dir -t rpm -n protobuf -v 3 3 0    --vendor  You Not RedHat     --license  Google      --description  protocol buffers     --rpm-dist el7    -m you youraddress com    --url  http  somewhere where you get the package oritssource     --rpm-autoreqprov    usr   sudo rpm -i -f protobuf-3 3 0-1 el7 x86 64 rpm  sudo rpm -e protobuf-3 3 0         Prefer yum to rpm if you can   On Debian9   make install DESTDIR dest cd dest fpm -f -s dir -t deb -n protobuf -v 3 3 0   -C  pwd    --prefix     --vendor  You Not Debian    --license    grep Copyright       LICENSE     --description    cat README adoc     --deb-upstream-changelog       CHANGES txt    --url  http  somewhere where you get the package oritssource     usr local bin    usr local lib    usr local include   sudo apt install -f   deb  sudo apt-get remove protobuf   Prefer apt to dpkg where you can   I ve also posted answer this here

User · Answer

The  stow  utility was designed to solve this problem  http   www gnu org software stow

User · Answer

There is no standard unfortunately  this is one of the perils of installing from source  Some Makefiles will include an  uninstall   so  make uninstall   from the source directory may work  Otherwise  it may be a matter of manually undoing whatever the make install did   make clean usually just cleans up the source directory - removing generated compiled files and the like  probably not what you re after

[makefile] What's the opposite of 'make install', i.e. how do you uninstall a library in Linux?

How to uninstall after "make install"

Method #1 (make uninstall)

Method #2 (checkinstall -- only for debian based systems)

Method #3 (install_manifest.txt)

Examples related to makefile

Examples related to uninstallation