GNU bug report logs - #68756
Uninstalling emacs does not remove Start Menu entries created during the installation

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From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Corwin Brust <corwin <at> bru.st>
Cc: 68756 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Dilyan.Palauzov <at> aegee.org, stefankangas <at> gmail.com
Subject: bug#68756: bug#67667: bug#68756: Uninstalling emacs does not remove Start Menu entries created during the installation
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2024 09:14:34 +0200

> From: Corwin Brust <corwin <at> bru.st>
> Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2024 14:32:10 -0600
> Cc: 68756 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Dilyan.Palauzov <at> aegee.org, stefankangas <at> gmail.com
> 
> On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 1:30 PM Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> > But why cannot you remove those old shortcuts/submenus when the new
> > Emacs version is installed?
> >
> 
> Perhaps I can.  I agree to try.  To confirm, the goal would be to
> remove any *broken* shortcuts, I think. (We do not currently create
> submenus unless the user specifies the pathing manually.) We might
> also consider deleting older uninstallers, however I'll come back to
> this point.
> 
> If that is correct, a question would be if we can confine ourselves to
> looking at the user's selected Start Menu folder, during install, or
> if we should instead traverse the user's entire Start Menu hierarchy
> looking for broken shortcuts to runemacs.exe (and maybe old
> uninstallers), and deleting them.

If the latter is feasible, perhaps do that, maybe as an option after
user confirmation?  The former is probably the minimum you should do.

> Yet another option here would be scanning for older versions and
> asking what to do with them.    This would be more of my preferred
> option, however I don't expect to be fast creating and testing a
> net-new feature created in a language I'm just learning, for this
> work.  I guess I'll be racing to be ready for Emacs 30.1 pretests, if
> we take all that on.
> 
> For this reason (there are much better solutions but I cannot create
> and test them quickly), I think we should apply what we have so far
> and I should produce a new set of binaries which installer will not
> unconditionally uninstall older Emacs versions.  Users who want to
> delete things can do so, but an unexpected recursive delete feels like
> a very serious problem.
> 
> Do you have reservations, Eli?

No, SGTM.  And it's your call anyway, as I don't have a lot of
experience using installers.

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