Re: [Buildroot] [PATCH] package/pkg-generic: add support for uninstalling packages

[Thomas Petazzoni via buildroot <buildroot@buildroot.org>]

Hello,

On Tue, Mar 17, 2026 at 01:19:19PM +0530, Shubham Chakraborty wrote:
> Buildroot currently does not track which files are installed by each
> package in output/staging, output/target, output/host, and
> output/images directories. This makes it impossible to cleanly remove
> a package without performing a full rebuild.
> 
> This commit adds:
> 
> 1. A new Python script (support/scripts/pkg-uninstall.py) that reads
>    manifest files (.files-list*.txt) tracking package file installations
>    and removes all files belonging to a specified package from a given
>    directory.

Thanks for your patch. Unfortunately there's a reason why this hasn't
been implemented, because it simply doesn't work. Think about the
following scenario:

1. Make a build with BR2_PACKAGE_NTP=y, BR2_PACKAGE_OPENSSL=y

2. Run "make openssl-uninstall"

3. ntp is now broken on the target, because the ntp binary is linked
   against libopenssl.so, but libopenssl.so is no longer on the target

Best regards,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, co-owner and CEO, Bootlin
Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering and training
https://bootlin.com
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