Re: [gentoo-user] ARGH I uninstalled python

[Jorge Morais <please.no.spam.here@gmail.com>]

On Sat, 23 May 2009 19:08:50 -0300
Jorge Morais <please.no.spam.here@gmail.com> wrote:

> One idea: you can can recompile python with a safe
> prefix (such as a subdir of your home), issue make install (not as root,
> for increased safety) and see where Python install its files relative to
> the prefix, so you can delete them from your system
> (to be more careful before deleting a file, you can issue
> qfile <FILE> to see if it is owned by a portage-installed package.
> And in the end you can emerge python properly, from the sources, so all
> the ebuild logic (which is more than just ./configure, make and make install)
> gets applied, and you get a Python installation that respects your USE flags,
> CFLAGS and other system-specific settings (obviously you don't get such a
> system-customized python when you use the binary package from tinderbox).
> 

I should mention that you should be careful about deleting any files -
and qfile is not a 100% guarantee that the file does not come from a
Portage-installed package. For example, in my system Python was
installed by Portage, and
$ file /usr/bin/python
/usr/bin/python: symbolic link to `python2.5'
, yet
$ qfile /usr/bin/python
<No output>

So qfile giving an empty output is not a guarantee that the file is
indeed orphan. Specially with symlinks - look at the Python ebuild
and see the way these symlinks are generated.

And of course, it is wise to emerge --buildpkg python before doing any
cleaning.
And after the cleaning, reemerge Python.

Regards,
    Jorge