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tacojohnellenich · May 26, 2001, 01:03 PM

How do you uninstall programs in X??? It it just like 9.1 or more like windows? YUCK!

fitter · May 26, 2001, 01:13 PM

Originally posted by tacojohnellenich:
How do you uninstall programs in X??? It it just like 9.1 or more like windows? YUCK!

It's a very complicated procedure. You have to find the program, click and hold on it, and drag it to the trash. Quite a pain. Or, more confusing still, you click once on the app, and hit command + delete.

Forgive the sarcasm. Seriously, it's exactly like OS 9 in that regard. Applications are removed ("uninstalled," a term from the Wintel world) by deleting them. Like OS 9, you must delete the preferences file by hand. Like OS 9, the various ways to install include dragging and dropping, using VISE installer, etc. Apple hasn't forgotten all their roots. The transition is a good deal less painless than you seem to have been told.

Vader's Robotic Stump · May 26, 2001, 01:20 PM

Actually, it is better then OS9. 9 can scatter extensions and control panels. In X all you get is the package and the prefs file, and you don't really need to worry about prefs.

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billybob · May 26, 2001, 02:08 PM

Fitter, Vader: have you ever used a unix program before?

Yah, with things like omniweb or whatever, you can delete like that. Anything that uses the command line will generally not be easy to delete, at least in my experience.

Some CLI programs throw files all over your harddrive... and I have no idea of finding out exactly where they are. There are remnants of a few programs on my HD that I just can't get rid of.

Vader's Robotic Stump · May 26, 2001, 02:24 PM

I think we were talking about proper Mac applications. Yes you CAN install unix Apps but OSX is supposed to be a Mac OS.
Most users who install Unix apps should be smart enought to know how to get rid of em.

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gorgonzola · May 26, 2001, 03:16 PM

I agree with Vader's injury. UNIX apps don't count.

All apps in OS X are just distributed as bundles, so it's usually just one icon that contains all the resources etc. So you just drag it from a disk image (usually .dmg) to the /Applications folder. That's installation. To uninstall just delete it.

That's it. The only things that you can't really uninstall are the system updates and stuff that you install with Installer.app. Hopefully they're putting in an uninstall feature into that app too as I've asked them for it about 50 times.

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May 26, 2001, 03:25 PM

just to make this thread interesting, how about uninstalling .pkg files? What if I wanted to get some HD space back on my beige(8GB max) and take out the Developer stuff. I know this was possible in the dev builds, how about now?

chuckeroo · May 26, 2001, 03:26 PM

For some reason, I remember when X was at the beta stage or even earlier apple had said that they were going to somehow implement an uninstall feature. I personally would like this feature, as even though it is easy to just drop the app in the trash, some apps, like MS Explorer, used to install stuff that would mess up some things on my system (at least in os9). I know we don't have extensions, control panels, etc., but when I want to uninstall an app, I want to make sure everything having to do with it is wiped clean, at least for the sake of hd space and conflictions with other apps.

Synotic · May 26, 2001, 03:51 PM

Originally posted by pippy:
just to make this thread interesting, how about uninstalling .pkg files? What if I wanted to get some HD space back on my beige(8GB max) and take out the Developer stuff. I know this was possible in the dev builds, how about now?

Exactly. I know several people use .pkg files to distribute their files. Packages are mainly used to install *multiple files* in *multiple locations*. How can you uninstall these? By looking at the package contents, you still can't see what there is to uninstall. When you install something you install multiple stuff. I think he knows how to delete an application but doesn't know how to delete any other stuff the installer might have installed into the library.

Millennium · May 26, 2001, 03:57 PM

Actually, it all depends.

If you installed the app by dragging it to your hard drive, then you can uninstall it just by dragging it to the Trash.

If you use an Installer program to install it, then the installer should also be able to perform an uninstall as an option. Unfortunately, the Apple-supplied installer doesn't do this yet, though they've promised it.

Finally, in terms of Unix apps. If you compiled it yourself, you probably did a "make install" at some point in the compile. Most UNIX source comes with the ability to "make uninstall" the same way. Not all of it does, but those which do should be able to make use of this. This does, however, mean that you have to hang on to the source, or at least the Makefile that came with it.

Oh, and if you got the app through fink, that has an uninstall feature too, I believe. Check the fink documentation for more.

I do, however, agree with the assertion that Unix apps don't count. Mainly because they're not Mac apps, and by and large were never written with Mac users in mind. Also, most Mac users are never going to run a unix program; those few who do should know what they're doing, or they would not be working with the BSD subsystem in the first place. But the biggest thing is that you'll have to convince the developers of Unix apps to make Mac installers. This is the hard part.

tie · May 26, 2001, 04:29 PM

Originally posted by pippy:
just to make this thread interesting, how about uninstalling .pkg files? What if I wanted to get some HD space back on my beige(8GB max) and take out the Developer stuff. I know this was possible in the dev builds, how about now?

Well, a sudo rm -rf /Developer will get rid of most of it. There are some files it puts into /System/Library, I think, but these aren't too large and it's not easy to get rid of them (unless you knew what they actually were

). Basically, you should be very wary of installing .pkgs, because of security problems and because of the way they can install all over your hard drive without telling you. I'll only install them from Apple, so hopefully there won't be too many.

OverclockedHomoSapien · May 26, 2001, 04:56 PM

All apps in OS X are just distributed as bundles, so it's usually just one icon that contains all the resources etc. So you just drag it from a disk image (usually .dmg) to the /Applications folder. That's installation. To uninstall just delete it.

This is SOOOO cool! The procedure for installing and uninstalling apps on Macs is one of the stronger points of the platform for me. Whenever I have to troubleshoot my father's Wintel system, there are always fragments of old apps scattered about everywhere. It just doesn't make any sense! And if I want to delete a program, I use the uninstall command from that control panel that adds/removes apps. But that stupid panel gives virtually no feedback, no listings of what was deleted from where, nothing. I don't trust it--I like to delete apps myself so I KNOW they are gone.

The good news is that I talked my dad into buying a Powermac!

seb2 · May 26, 2001, 07:39 PM

i haven't yet played very much with the command line in os x, in most linux distributions (which i have played with), you get the rpm (radhat package manager) which -- if used -- keeps track of all installed applications, dependencies, etc.
it also has a feature to remove all those files spread all over the hard drive.
does anybody have an idea whether apple implemented something similar?

Millennium · May 26, 2001, 07:46 PM

Originally, Apple planned to use Debian's dpkg package manager as the basis for their installer (dpkg is a lot like RPM, though some consider it superior; as I haven't tried it very much I can't comment on that).

But then Apple Legal insisted on no GPL'd stuff in the installer. So that had to be scrapped, and we were left with the only-slightly-better-than-junk known as Apple's current installer.

pmcd · May 26, 2001, 08:51 PM

I wonder why Apple didn't go the NeXT route? The installer had uninstall and compress as options. Perhaps it has something to do with all the issues surrounding resource forks?

Philip

Originally posted by Millennium:
But then Apple Legal insisted on no GPL'd stuff in the installer. So that had to be scrapped, and we were left with the only-slightly-better-than-junk known as Apple's current installer.

[This message has been edited by pmcd (edited 05-26-2001).]