Arch Linux

realitycoup

Member

Registered: 2008-10-28

Posts: 4

Need to completely remove/reinstall package

So I was fooling around with vim trying to get a utility script to work and I extracted the .tgz file into /usr/share/vim. I did this because the folders in the utility were similarly named to the folders in said directory, so I figured all the files would go into the right places and I'd be able to use the utility. The files end up located correctly but then vim spits out warnings and an error on startup complaining.

So instead of rummaging through and deleting all of these files I figure I'll just re-install vim and start clean. I thought reinstalling the package would do this but /usr/share/vim was still the same, so I removed the directory, removed vim and reinstalled naively hoping it would restore the defaults. That didn't happen and now I'm missing a rather vital (I know, I should have backed it up ) directory for vim.

My question is: Is pacman capable of completely removing an installed package from the system, or restoring it? I'd just like to completely remove vim then reinstall it.

I appreciate any help or guidance

Last edited by realitycoup (2008-11-18 23:13:54)

chilebiker

Member

From: Zurich, Switzerland

Registered: 2006-07-18

Posts: 161

Re: Need to completely remove/reinstall package

"pacman -Rs <pkg-name>" removes a package and all its dependencies. I think this should do the trick.

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Don't panic!

realitycoup

Member

Registered: 2008-10-28

Posts: 4

Re: Need to completely remove/reinstall package

Sadly I had done that but to no avail. I ended up just manually removing whatever was left of vim, reinstalling the package, then grabbing the lost folder from the vim svn online. Now it seems to be working. Thank you though!

jacko

Member

Registered: 2007-11-23

Posts: 840

Re: Need to completely remove/reinstall package

So I was fooling around with vim trying to get a utility script to work and I extracted the .tgz file into /usr/share/vim.

the problem was clearly that you installed this script manually, how do you expect pacman to track something that you installed manually?

So, manually uninstalling your manually installed files is the only way.