What to do if you accidentally installed some experimental project to your system folder? Are here any ways to undo install script. Here is a simple solution.

Preamble

below may work or may not, this is all given as-is, you and only you are responsible person in case of some damage, data loss and so on. But I hope things go smooth!

To undo `make install` I would do (and I did) this:

Idea: check whatever script installs and undo this with simple bash script.

1. Reconfigure your build dir to install to some custom dir. I usually do this: `–prefix=$PWD/install`. For CMake, you can go to your build dir, open CMakeCache.txt, and fix CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX value.
2. Install project to custom directory (just run `make install` again).
3. Now we push from assumption, that `make install` script installs into custom dir just same contents you want to remove from somewhere else (usually `/usr/local`). So, we need a script.
3.1. Script should compare custom dir, with dir you want clean. I use this:

anti-install.sh

RM_DIR=$1
PRESENT_DIR=$2

echo "Remove files from $RM_DIR, which are present in $PRESENT_DIR"

pushd $RM_DIR

for fn in `find . -iname '*'`; do
# echo "Checking $PRESENT_DIR/$fn..."
if test -f "$PRESENT_DIR/$fn"; then
# First try this, and check whether things go plain
echo "rm $RM_DIR/$fn"

# Then uncomment this, (but, check twice it works good to you).
# rm $RM_DIR/$fn
fi
done

popd

3.2. Now just run this script (it will go dry-run)

bash anti-install.sh <dir you want to clean> <custom installation dir>

E.g. You wan’t to clean /usr/local, and your custom installation dir is /user/me/llvm.build/install, then it would be

bash anti-install.sh /usr/local /user/me/llvm.build/install

3.3. Check log carefully, if commands are good to you, uncomment `rm $RM_DIR/$fn` and run it again. But stop! Did you really check carefully? May be check again?

Good luck!

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