Unable to uninstall package with cygwin source

ferm10n commented 7 years ago

What You Are Seeing?

Error when uninstalling git with cygwin source:

Uninstalling the following packages:
git
Cygwin does not implement upgrade

What is Expected?

git should be uninstalled

How Did You Get This To Happen? (Steps to Reproduce)

choco uninstall -y git -source cygwin -dv

Output Log

GIST LINK - https://gist.github.com/ferm10n/fbf3c5a74771d6c9e91bf89c8e0f3d85

Am I just not using this command correctly? Searches for that error message yielded no results.

ferventcoder commented 7 years ago

You are not missing anything. This functionality has not been added to the alternative cygwin source. I added this as an up for grabs feature. :D

ghost commented 6 years ago

Hey @ferventcoder ! I’m interested in working on this, and I’ve already done some research. First and foremost, my intention was to mirror the same methods used for installing packages in Cygwin in CygwinService.cs, but for uninstalling. However, while git uninstalls correctly with this method, there are a number of issues:

Perl and Python only uninstall as desired by calling remove-categories rather than remove-packages, because you need to uninstall multiple packages that are dependent on each other (packages that are installed automatically when you use –packages to install the main python or perl package as done by CygwinService.cs .)
Actually, you can uninstall python by using remove-packages but only if you know the specific name of the package (like python2), unlike with the installation process where you just ask for python and you don’t care about the specific package names; to do the same with perl you first need to uninstall dependent packages, and therefore you need to know the names of said packages.
Ruby cannot be uninstalled through the CLI (both –remove-packages and –remove-categories fail), because every Ruby package is dependent on another Ruby package, and you would have to force ignoring the dependencies, which you can’t do through the CLI, only through the normal GUI setup (there is a checkbox to uncheck, and no command line equivalent.)
Actually, Ruby can be uninstalled if you uninstall every non-essential Cygwin package by asking to –prune-install, but that again uninstalls everything else as well, so then you would need to reinstall the packages you want to keep one by one.

The options I see are:

Only allowing uninstalling of individual packages, but the user needs to know the exact names and dependencies (very unlike the install process). Cannot force uninstall of packages that are depended upon (and therefore cannot uninstall Ruby.) /cygwinsetup.exe --quiet-mode --no-admin --no-shortcuts --remove-packages python2
Allowing uninstalling of generic categories (Python, Perl), but then we need to know when to uninstall a package (--remove-packages git), and when a generic category (--remove-categories Perl.) This distinction is not made in the install process. Cannot force uninstall packages that are depended upon (and therefore cannot uninstall Ruby.)
```
/cygwinsetup.exe --quiet-mode --no-admin --no-shortcuts --remove-packages git
/cygwinsetup.exe --quiet-mode --no-admin --no-shortcuts --remove-categories Python
```
Using –prune-install to uninstall everything non-essential and reinstalling everything except for what was asked to be uninstalled. This seems like a bad idea, but it’s the only pure CLI option that uninstalls Ruby.
```
/cygwinsetup.exe --quiet-mode --no-admin --no-shortcuts --prune-install
/cygwinsetup.exe --quiet-mode --no-admin --no-shortcuts --packages every-package, you, had, before, 
except, what, you, wanted, to, uninstall
```
My favorite: present the user with the semi-managed GUI package chooser (--package-manager), so all options are possible, including uninstalling packages that are depended on. This seems to be the least messy option, since it is the only option that will warn you about dependencies and allow you to ignore them, give you the names of said dependencies, and we don’t need to know whether the user is uninstalling what Cygwin considers a single package (git) or a category (Python), nor do we care about specific package names. /cygwinsetup.exe --quiet-mode --no-admin --no-shortcuts --package-manager

Please give me guidance on what the desired behavior is.

chocolatey / choco