Need to uninstall many packages, how?

Need to uninstall many packages, how?

[Brad De Vries]

Hello everyone.  Today I accidentally installed many new packages into
my cygwin setup, namely X and Gnome, and I didn't want them.  How do I
uninstall them?

How this happened:
1) I noticed that I had not installed vim, I know I was shocked too,
but nonetheless, it's true.
2) I ran setup.exe,
  a) got to the "Select Packages" screen
  b) searched for vim
  c) opened the Editors category
  d) clicked on the first one I saw
  Oops, I had accidentally selected the GTK interface to vim.
  e) setup.exe automatically selected the correct vim package as a
package dependency, so I simply clicked the GTK vim again until it
read "Skip."
  f) Clicked <Next> enough times to get it to run

After several minutes of downloading, verifying, installing,
configuring, post-installing, etc. I realized that it installed a lot
of X and Gnome related packages.  Now I want to remove them all
because I don't want them.  However, when I re-run setup.exe and try
to click the various packages to uninstall, it changes other packages
that I had previously selected to uninstall back to "keep."
The only option I see that's available to me is to completely
uninstall cygwin and then re-install the packages I do want.  That
does not sound fun and I'm hoping someone has a better idea of how to
remove lots of related packages.

Thanks,
Brad.

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Re: Need to uninstall many packages, how?

[Andy Koppe]

On 21 July 2010 22:18, Brad De Vries wrote:
> Hello everyone.  Today I accidentally installed many new packages into
> my cygwin setup, namely X and Gnome, and I didn't want them.  How do I
> uninstall them?
>
> How this happened:
> 1) I noticed that I had not installed vim, I know I was shocked too,
> but nonetheless, it's true.
> 2) I ran setup.exe,
>   a) got to the "Select Packages" screen
>   b) searched for vim
>   c) opened the Editors category
>   d) clicked on the first one I saw
>   Oops, I had accidentally selected the GTK interface to vim.
>   e) setup.exe automatically selected the correct vim package as a
> package dependency, so I simply clicked the GTK vim again until it
> read "Skip."
>   f) Clicked <Next> enough times to get it to run

Unfortunately setup.exe's makes no attempt to distinguish between
packages selected by the user and those selected by the dependency
resolver. Too late now, but it's worth getting in the habit of
clicking through to the 'Partial' view to check what's going to change
before clicking Next.

> After several minutes of downloading, verifying, installing,
> configuring, post-installing, etc. I realized that it installed a lot
> of X and Gnome related packages.  Now I want to remove them all
> because I don't want them.  However, when I re-run setup.exe and try
> to click the various packages to uninstall, it changes other packages
> that I had previously selected to uninstall back to "keep."

Yep, I think that's setup.exe's most infuriating UI failing. Here's a
ridiculous workaround that might just work: click on all those
packages until you get to 'Source', then click on them all once more
to get them to 'Uninstall'. The trick here is to try to avoid getting
the dependency resolver involved. Otherwise, perhaps apt-cyg or
cyg-apt could help.

Andy

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Re: Need to uninstall many packages, how?

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 7/21/2010 5:18 PM, Brad De Vries wrote:
> Hello everyone.  Today I accidentally installed many new packages into
> my cygwin setup, namely X and Gnome, and I didn't want them.  How do I
> uninstall them?

If it really is all of Gnome and X11 that you want to uninstall, you can
trying uninstalling Gnome and then X11 in the "Category" view, in that order
and one at a time.

If you need to uninstall individual packages, then try Andy's suggestion.

-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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Re: Need to uninstall many packages, how?

[Alex Leigh]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Brad De Vries wrote:
>
> After several minutes of downloading, verifying, installing,
> configuring, post-installing, etc. I realized that it installed a lot
> of X and Gnome related packages.  Now I want to remove them all
> because I don't want them.  However, when I re-run setup.exe and try
> to click the various packages to uninstall, it changes other packages
> that I had previously selected to uninstall back to "keep."
> The only option I see that's available to me is to completely
> uninstall cygwin and then re-install the packages I do want.  That
> does not sound fun and I'm hoping someone has a better idea of how to
> remove lots of related packages.
>

I've also run into this annoyance and I found another workaround you
could try. First, empty the Cygwin package cache on your local
computer. Then run Setup.exe, choosing "Install from local directory".
Then you can click on packages to uninstall them without cycling
through the "Reinstall" option which is what's causing dependent
packages to be reset to "Keep".

Alex

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Re: Need to uninstall many packages, how?

[Christopher Faylor]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:01:23PM -0400, Alex Leigh wrote:
>On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Brad De Vries wrote:
>>
>> After several minutes of downloading, verifying, installing,
>> configuring, post-installing, etc. I realized that it installed a lot
>> of X and Gnome related packages. ?Now I want to remove them all
>> because I don't want them. ?However, when I re-run setup.exe and try
>> to click the various packages to uninstall, it changes other packages
>> that I had previously selected to uninstall back to "keep."
>> The only option I see that's available to me is to completely
>> uninstall cygwin and then re-install the packages I do want. ?That
>> does not sound fun and I'm hoping someone has a better idea of how to
>> remove lots of related packages.
>>
>
>I've also run into this annoyance and I found another workaround you
>could try. First, empty the Cygwin package cache on your local
>computer. Then run Setup.exe, choosing "Install from local directory".
>Then you can click on packages to uninstall them without cycling
>through the "Reinstall" option which is what's causing dependent
>packages to be reset to "Keep".

Interesting way of dealing with the problem.  I never would have thought
of that.

We really should fix setup.exe so that it is easier to uninstall stuff.
It's a real problem.

cgf


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Re: Need to uninstall many packages, how?

[Andy Koppe]

On 22 July 2010 05:55, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>>On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Brad De Vries wrote:
>>>
>>> After several minutes of downloading, verifying, installing,
>>> configuring, post-installing, etc. I realized that it installed a lot
>>> of X and Gnome related packages. ?Now I want to remove them all
>>> because I don't want them. ?However, when I re-run setup.exe and try
>>> to click the various packages to uninstall, it changes other packages
>>> that I had previously selected to uninstall back to "keep."
>>> The only option I see that's available to me is to completely
>>> uninstall cygwin and then re-install the packages I do want. ?That
>>> does not sound fun and I'm hoping someone has a better idea of how to
>>> remove lots of related packages.
>>>
> We really should fix setup.exe so that it is easier to uninstall stuff.
> It's a real problem.

Could this be done simply by not running the dependency resolver until
the user clicks 'Next' on the package selection screen?

Apparently the latter already happens anyway, because if you set a
package to delete that others still depend on, you get a 'Resolve
Dependencies' screen that lists all the packages being added
automatically and why. It even offers an option not to install those
dependencies (but sensibly recommends against that). Perhaps the
'Warning! Unmet Dependencies Found' message at the top would need to
lose the 'Warning!' so as not to needlessly scare users.

Doing this would also address Brad's original issue of packages having
been selected without him realising.

Andy

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Re: Need to uninstall many packages, how?

[Brad De Vries]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Alex Leigh <leigh@hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Brad De Vries wrote:
>>
>> After several minutes of downloading, verifying, installing,
>> configuring, post-installing, etc. I realized that it installed a lot
>> of X and Gnome related packages.  Now I want to remove them all
>> because I don't want them.  However, when I re-run setup.exe and try
>> to click the various packages to uninstall, it changes other packages
>> that I had previously selected to uninstall back to "keep."
>> The only option I see that's available to me is to completely
>> uninstall cygwin and then re-install the packages I do want.  That
>> does not sound fun and I'm hoping someone has a better idea of how to
>> remove lots of related packages.
>>
>
> I've also run into this annoyance and I found another workaround you
> could try. First, empty the Cygwin package cache on your local
> computer. Then run Setup.exe, choosing "Install from local directory".
> Then you can click on packages to uninstall them without cycling
> through the "Reinstall" option which is what's causing dependent
> packages to be reset to "Keep".
>
> Alex

Thanks Alex, and everyone else that made suggestions.  I'll give this
a try tomorrow and report back.

BTW, I second the motion to fix setup.exe.

Brad.

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Re: Need to uninstall many packages, how?

[Andrey Repin]

Greetings, Brad De Vries!

> BTW, I second the motion to fix setup.exe.

You're not even third, as I'm aware.
From the past discussions, people is well aware of the issue, the real problem
is to get someone to actually do something about it. The human power are
lacking...

Good suggestion with clearing cache, though...
Enough to rename it's parent directory, however.


--
WBR,
 Andrey Repin (anrdaemon@freemail.ru) 22.07.2010, <22:38>

Sorry for my terrible english...


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Re: Need to uninstall many packages, how?

[Brad De Vries]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 1:11 AM, Brad De Vries <devriesbj@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Alex Leigh <leigh@hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Brad De Vries wrote:
>>>
>>> After several minutes of downloading, verifying, installing,
>>> configuring, post-installing, etc. I realized that it installed a lot
>>> of X and Gnome related packages.  Now I want to remove them all
>>> because I don't want them.  However, when I re-run setup.exe and try
>>> to click the various packages to uninstall, it changes other packages
>>> that I had previously selected to uninstall back to "keep."
>>> The only option I see that's available to me is to completely
>>> uninstall cygwin and then re-install the packages I do want.  That
>>> does not sound fun and I'm hoping someone has a better idea of how to
>>> remove lots of related packages.
>>>
>>
>> I've also run into this annoyance and I found another workaround you
>> could try. First, empty the Cygwin package cache on your local
>> computer. Then run Setup.exe, choosing "Install from local directory".
>> Then you can click on packages to uninstall them without cycling
>> through the "Reinstall" option which is what's causing dependent
>> packages to be reset to "Keep".
>>
>> Alex
>
> Thanks Alex, and everyone else that made suggestions.  I'll give this
> a try tomorrow and report back.
>
> BTW, I second the motion to fix setup.exe.
>
> Brad.

Well, I tried several times to get rid of all the undesired packages
and I ended up deleting the entire cygwin install and re-installing it
-- what a pain!

The biggest problem I ran into with the suggestion to "install from
local directory" was that it lost all the categories, not good, along
with the dependencies, a good thing.  What I tried to do was use the
original setup directory details and get a list of all the packages in
the Gnome and X categories.  Then I re-ran setup without the original
setup directory and tried to find the packages to uninstall, but the
vast majority were not listed.  I tried again with only package cache
removed and the original setup.ini in place, then all the categories
were listed but the dependencies were back.

I tried various other options but in the end, it was easier to delete
and re-install.

Anyway, thanks for everyone's suggestions.

Brad.

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