CMake support "make uninstall"?

I am trying to find some sudo-free solution to enable my users install and unistall my application. Using

set(CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX "$ENV{HOME}/opt/${CPACK_PACKAGE_NAME}-${CPACK_PACKAGE_VERSION}/") SET(CMAKE_INSTALL_RPATH "$ENV{HOME}/${CPACK_PACKAGE_NAME}-${CPACK_PACKAGE_VERSION}/") 

I can direct the files to the user's home directory, and

make install 

works fine. With reference to What's the opposite of 'make install', ie. how do you uninstall a library in Linux? I did not find any idea, which is sudo-free and is not complex for a non-system-admin person.

1. Is anyhow make uninstall supported by CMake?

2. My uninstall is quite simple: all files go in a subdirectory of the user's home. In principle, removed that new subdirectory could solve the problem. Has make install, with parameters above, any side effect, or I can write in my user's guide that the newly produced subdirectory can be removed as 'uninstall'?

5 Answers

If you want to add an uninstall target you can take a look to the official CMake FAQ at:

If you just want a quick way to uninstall all files, just run:

xargs rm < install_manifest.txt 

install_manifest.txt file is created when you run make install.

No there is not. See in the FAQ from CMake wiki:

By default, CMake does not provide the "make uninstall" target, so you cannot do this. We do not want "make uninstall" to remove useful files from the system.

If you want an "uninstall" target in your project, then nobody prevents you from providing one. You need to delete the files listed in install_manifest.txt file. [followed by some example code]

Remove files and folders (empty only) added by make install from a cmake project:

cat install_manifest.txt | sudo xargs rm cat install_manifest.txt | xargs -L1 dirname | sudo xargs rmdir -p 

The second command will print a bunch of errors because it recursively deletes folders until it finds one that is not empty. I like seeing those errors to know which folders are left. If you want to hide these errors you can add --ignore-fail-on-non-empty to rmdir.

From the source folder:

1. open install_manifest.txt (created by make install)

2. remove all the directories/files listed

3. remove any remaining files you missed:

   xargs rm < install_manifest.txt

4. remove any hidden directories/files:

   $rm -rf ~/.packagename

Remove the source folder.

# make uninstall add_custom_target("uninstall" COMMENT "Uninstall installed files") add_custom_command( TARGET "uninstall" POST_BUILD COMMENT "Uninstall files with install_manifest.txt" COMMAND xargs rm -vf < install_manifest.txt || echo Nothing in install_manifest.txt to be uninstalled! ) 

Add this to CMakeLists.txt, then an uninstall target is made by hand.