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  19         <h1>setup.py uninstall</h1><b>Contents</b><ul>
  20 <li>
  21 <a href="#unix-like">Unix-like</a>
  22 </li>
  23 <li>
  24 <a href="#windows">Windows</a>
  25 </li>
  26 <li>
  27 <a href="#use-other-methods-which-fully-support-uninstall-when-available">Use other methods which fully support uninstall when available</a>
  28 </li>
  29 </ul>
  30 <h2 id="unix-like">Unix-like</h2>
  31
  32 <p>Install over the existing installation with the same sources, recording installed files, then delete them.</p>
  33 <div class="highlight"><pre>sudo python setup.py install --record files.txt
  34 <span class="c1"># inspect files.txt to make sure it looks ok. Then in bash:</span>
  35 tr <span class="s1">&#39;\n&#39;</span> <span class="s1">&#39;\0&#39;</span> &lt; files.txt <span class="p">|</span> xargs -0 sudo rm -f --
  36 </pre></div>
  37 <h2 id="windows">Windows</h2>
  38
  39 <p>Install on top of the existing installation with a windows installer, then add-remove programs to uninstall.</p>
  40 <div class="highlight"><pre>python setup.py bdist_wininst
  41 dist/foo-1.0.win32.exe
  42 </pre></div>
  43 <h2 id="use-other-methods-which-fully-support-uninstall-when-available">Use other methods which fully support uninstall when available</h2>
  44
  45 <p>Uninstalling setup.py install has some <em>inherent problems</em>, which usually aren&#39;t a problem:</p>
  46
  47 <ul>
  48 <li>Files which a different package also depends on will be removed by uninstall</li>
  49 <li>Can&#39;t remove installed directories. --record only records non-directory files.</li>
  50 <li>If a file is installed which includes a newline, the command this page
  51 recommends will fail. This won&#39;t happen except for a rare bug or a
  52 malicious program. We could overcome this by using bdist_dumb, then
  53 removing the files found in the archive which that command
  54 builds. However, I&#39;m no more confident of that command not having a
  55 bug or edge case in which it would produce different files than a
  56 normal install than I am of a package having a file with a newline in
  57 it.</li>
  58 </ul>
  59
  60 <h3 id="alternatives">Alternatives</h3>
  61
  62 <ul>
  63 <li>pip</li>
  64 <li>python setup.py install bdist_rpm</li>
  65 <li>python setup.py bdist_wininst</li>
  66 <li><a href="https://packaging.python.org/">official python recommendations</a></li>
  67 </ul>
  68
  69 <p>This page is also at <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/a/25209129/14456">stackoverflow answer</a>.</p>
  70
  71 <p>TODO: contribute this under https://wiki.python.org/moin/Distutils/Cookbook.</p>
  72
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