How do I cleanly remove ruby 1.8.7 from CentOS 5?

Question

How can I cleanly remove my ruby version 1.8.7 from CentOS 5? I installed it by downloading the source code and performed a make.

Answer 1

You shouldn't install software this way.
Removing software which was installed like this may be dangerous:

1. unpack the same ruby to /tmp
2. run:

    ./configure --prefix=/tmp/somedir    # by default prefix points to /usr/local
    make
    make install    # this will install ruby in /tmp/somedir instead of where you've installed it
    cd /tmp/somedir
    find . -type f -exec rm -i /usr/local{} \;    # Use without -i if you are shure
    find . -type d -exec rm -ir /usr/local{} \;

I hope this will help you

Answer 2

You could also try the technique from this question. Basically look for .installed.list in the directory you built ruby in. This should have a list of all the files installed. One way to remove them all would be

cat .installed.list | xargs rm

Note that this will only delete files, not directories. I guess you could also do

cat .installed.list | xargs rmdir

after the first command. That should clean up the directories aswell. And rmdir will not remove a directory if it still contains files, so it should be safe ...

Answer 3

This works for me.

more .installed.list | xargs rm -rfv

Answer 4

It will not be easy if you issued configure and make without using --prefix switch, but you can try this way:

1. Extract file list from the RPM database:

   rpm -qla > list1.txt

2. Then find all files from your system

   find / > list1.txt

3. Then diff is your friend:

   diff list1.txt list2.txt > alien_files.txt

In alien_files.txt you'll have the files which weren't installed via rpm (including ruby's). Of course you'll have to filter /proc, /tmp, ... files, but I said that it will not be easy. :)

If you like the RPM philosophy as I do, then read my article on howto install Ruby Enterprise 1.8.7 on CentOS 5 as rpm here:

http://www.cherpec.com/2009/10/ruby-enterprise-edition-1-8-7-source-rpm-for-centos5-rhel5/