Re: FEATURE REQUEST: make uninstall should delete empty directories.

[Andrew Suffield <asuffield at debian dot org>]

On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 05:00:14PM -0500, Eric Siegerman wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 08:34:19AM -0600, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> > If a package supports creating the directory /usr/local (as Automake
> > does by default) should this directory be recursively removed if a
> > package is uninstalled?
> 
> Absolutely not!  (I rather suspect the question was rhetorical,
> but I'm answering it anyway :-)

Nor will it, because /usr/local will never be empty.

> Thus, if I'm right that Automake doesn't know which directories
> the package owns, it should should err on the side of caution: it
> should *not* try to delete any empty directories at uninstall
> time.  Neither should Automake try to guess -- guesses involving
> the "rm" command, especially as root, are a really dangerous
> idea!

That's why you use the rmdir command.

-- 
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