Help needed uninstalling / reinstalling ports

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Sep 6, 2009, at 14:50, Michael_google gmail_Gersten wrote:

>>> That's not what I wanted. That's still not uninstalling what I  
>>> wanted,
>>> and it uninstalled a bunch more that I don't know if I wanted  
>>> removed
>>> or not.
>>
>> I believe it did what you asked: it tried to uninstall various  
>> ports you
>> requested, could not because it did not know which of multiple  
>> available
>> versions of those ports to uninstall, proceeded despite errors  
>> because you
>> used "-p", and then uninstalled inactive ports because you used "-u".
>>
>> The fact that we allow "-u" with "sudo port uninstall" seems weird  
>> to me. As
>> Mark pointed out, "sudo port uninstall inactive" does the same thing.
>
> Then perhaps the meaning needs to be changed.
>
> I thought "sudo port uninstall -u" would mean: Uninstall the inactive
> versions of these ports.
>
> Not: Uninstall ALL inactive versions of ALL ports.

Remember: the "-u" needs to go before the word "uninstall", not after.

I would agree the current behavior of "sudo port -u uninstall foo"  
makes no sense. Like you, I would have expected it to uninstall only  
ports called foo. After all, that is what it means when using "sudo  
port -u upgrade foo". But the man page says:

    uninstall
      Deactivate and uninstall portname.  To uninstall all installed  
but inactive ports, use -u.  [snip]

I would be in favor of either removing the "-u" option from "sudo port  
uninstall" entirely (since in its current form it's exactly the same  
as "sudo port uninstall inactive") or changing it to behave as you and  
I expected. Unless someone can explain why it currently does what it  
does?