AppCleaner/AppZapper functionality on Uninstall

[exiva]

Any possibility to make the Uninstall command perform similar to, or have an option to make it work similar to AppCleaner or AppZapper where it removes associated files as well? Preferences, etc.

[acollign]

This is something I also have in mind for a while now. So 👍

[vitorgalvao]

Those apps are not exactly flawless. Apps divide associated files between various locations, and they don’t necessarily respect the same structure, which means you can’t simply look in specific places to find every one of them. Those apps (AppCleaner and similar) look in the usual places for files and directories with names that could be related to what you want to delete; this is why they ask (used to ask?) you to confirm the files to be deleted — if they’re too thorough, they can delete something they shouldn’t, while if they’re not, they’ll leave a lot of traces.

Homebrew-cask tries to do everything with as little interaction as possible from you (that’s the whole point). This means that there’s not an optimal way of going about that file cleaning, unless every cask specifies exactly what to delete. This is feasible, but it makes the entry process that much more difficult for newcomers, and is itself something that takes some trial and error for the people who implement it, since it’s not an exact process.

There’s also the need to take into account the people that do not want that to happen (another flag may need to be set), since this is not everyone wants, all the time.

[exiva]

Perhaps a method for handling the straggler files, and not finding everything would be to include some uninstall methods or scripts in the Cask files, perhaps when creating the cask you could say ok, Chrome uses ~/Library/foo, ~/Library/preferences/com.foo.plist, etc. and have those deleted if given a flag. Just throwing ideas out there. As far as Cask being something that requires little interaction, and not something wanted done all the time when uninstalling a cask... First off, how often do you uninstall a cask? Probably not very often, so adding a flag to uninstall isn't that big of a deal I think.

[vitorgalvao]

I actually do it pretty often, both for testing purposes, and to try new casks that are added, but I agree that most people probably don’t uninstall casks that often, which is exactly where I was going — we’re adding (possibly a lot of) complexity for something that may not be worth it, particularly if it’s something that each contributor has to maintain, test, and update. AppZapper and AppCleaner are included in homebrew-cask, and they are specialised and centred around this very issue.

I’m not saying this shouldn’t be implemented, what I’m arguing is that it’s not simply a case of “let’s add this”, but rather “would this be desirable/feasible?”; “would it be truly useful?”; “would it stay in line with the goals of the project?”. Making the process as straightforward as possible is a central part of this project — if a simple Y/N question that happens rarely, warrants consideration, any kind of process that requires user interaction, however small, will not be implemented blindly.

[phinze]

Hey @exiva and @acollign - thanks for the idea. I agree that this is potentially a helpful feature.

I've always thought of casks as building up a consistent data model of the messy business of Mac package distribution, however we've also been treading carefully in uninstall territory, since the field diverges even more there. So as long as we are considering the implications properly, I'm happy to support us playing with this idea.

I think a good way to approach this would be to build up a PR that implements it for a few useful casks to see how it looks. That's how I approached install/uninstall originally and it was helpful to implement it in the context of a few examples.

[kevinSuttle]

Bump. I think this is the one thing holding others who are on the fence away.

[kevinSuttle]

Perhaps simply adding a --all-related-files flag with the uninstall command would help?

[vitorgalvao]

@kevinSuttle The problem here is defining what are all the related files. We’d need to specify those in every cask, and finding them is the real issue.

[kevinSuttle]

Right, which is why maybe we lean on something like AppCleaner to handle it, which can be handled from the command line.

[leoj3n]

Here's some potentially related reading from "rixstep".

http://rixstep.com/2/20121211,00.shtml
http://rixstep.com/2/20111212,00.shtml
http://rixstep.com/1/20071124,00.shtml
http://rixstep.com/4/2/appzapper,00.shtml

[cehoffman]

On the topic of tracking down files used by an application.

opensnoop is a tool that comes with the mac which will let you see what files any particular process is opening. Filtering out access of system files or just restricting reports to ~/Library, it should be much easier to find where an application is leaving extra files.

[kevinSuttle]

Any updates or decisions on this?

[luzpaz]

Related: #3132

[rolandwalker]

This functionality is now being added in #4869.

However, it will be a little while until we are all actually using it. There is no interface yet (the planned interface is command brew cask zap). It will also depend on the relevant info being added to each Cask.

[rolandwalker]

brew cask zap functionality is now in release v0.42.0

About 5% of Casks have zap stanzas, so there is plenty of work left to do. However, I think we can close this issue.

[designorant]

Great work!

[kevinSuttle]

🍻

[mAAdhaTTah]

Wow, this project has come a long way. Congrats.

[luzpaz]

👍 folks!

[acollign]

Great news! 👍