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Stow: Deleting packages
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5. Deleting packages

When the `-D' option is given, the action of Stow is to delete a package from the target tree. Note that Stow will not delete anything it doesn't "own". Deleting a package does not mean removing it from the stow directory or discarding the package tree.

To delete a package, Stow recursively scans the target tree, skipping over the stow directory (since that is usually a subdirectory of the target tree) and any other stow directories it encounters (see section 6.2 Multiple stow directories). Any symlink it finds that points into the package being deleted is removed. Any directory that contained only symlinks to the package being deleted is removed. Any directory that, after removing symlinks and empty subdirectories, contains only symlinks to a single other package, is considered to be a previously "folded" tree that was "split open." Stow will re-fold the tree by removing the symlinks to the surviving package, removing the directory, then linking the directory back to the surviving package.



This document was generated by Guillaume Morin on January, 7 2002 using texi2html