Removing installations done by “make install”

Question

Is there anyway of removing files installed by running the command make install?

Answer 1

The majority of packages that have make install also provide a make uninstall; this will usually remove package files, but not configuration files, similar to how apt-get remove works, in contrast to apt-get purge.

This, of course, only works properly if you keep the original package directory or reconfigure it using the same parameters for --prefix and such.

Answer 2

There is no automated way - that is why we have package managers.

You would have to manually go through the Makefile and find the files / directories that it installs and manually remove them.

Answer 3

On Ubuntu, it's actually pretty easy:

Install CheckInstall:

sudo aptitude install checkinstall

Run Make and let checkinstall create a .deb:

sudo make; sudo checkinstall

Uninstall the .deb and you're done.

Ubuntu Wiki