difference between deinstall and pkg_delete?

[Ian A. Tegebo]

On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 11:08:14AM -0700, Jon Falconer wrote:
> So I'm wondering what is the difference between pkg_delete and using "make
> deinstall" from within the ports directory? What does "make deinstall" do
> that pkg_delete does not do? What does pkg_delete do that "make deinstall"
> does not do?
After spending some time with /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk and the man page
for pkg_delete, I think I'm just as confused as you are.  As you
mention, the man page for ports seems to imply that pkg_delete is a bad
thing and that you should use 'make deinstall'.

My analysis of 'make deinstall' in bsd.port.mk concludes that the
deinstall target calls 'pkg_delete -f' on the package names supplied by
pkg_info.  I'm not entirely sure what implications this has for the
installation cookies.

If you were to only use pkg_delete, some things might go wrong.  For
example in the Technical Details section, it mentions the 'require' and
the 'deinstall' scripts that can fail during a pkg_delete.  A 
'pkg_delete -f' would force the issue (and that's what 'make deinstall' 
does).

Getting back to the 'make reinstall' target, it appears that all it does
is 'rm -f' the installation and package cookies before running install.
My conclusion is confusion.  I'm not sure what the man page author meant
by 
	Use this to restore a port after using pkg_delete(1)
        when you should have used deinstall.

Can someone with more experience give examples that might clarify the
situation?


--
Ian Tegebo
Residential Computing
University of California Berkeley