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14.4 Uninstall
As if things arent confusing enough, there is still one more major
installation-related feature which we haven't mentioned: uninstall.
Automake adds an uninstall target to your `Makefile' which
does the reverse of install : it deletes the newly installed
package.
Unlike install , there is no uninstall-data or
uninstall-exec ; while possible in theory we don't think this
would be useful enough to actually use. Like install , you can
write uninstall-local or uninstall-hook rules.
In our experience, uninstall is not a very useful feature.
Automake implements it because it is mandated by the GNU Standards,
but it doesn't work reliably across packages. Maintainers who write
install hooks typically neglect to write uninstall hooks. Also, since
it can't reliably uninstall a previously installed version of a
package, it isn't useful for what most people would want to use it for
anyway. We recommend using a real packaging system, several of which
are freely available. In particular, GNU Stow, RPM, and the Debian
packaging system seem like good choices.
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