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FURTHER-IMPROVEMENTS.md

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Possible Further Improvements

What about moving files to the trash?

It would be nice that pkg-uninstall moves the uninstalled package directories and files to the user's trash, instead of permanently removing them right away. This could be made leveraging some trash command-line tool that would be present.

Many candidates exist, with different levels of features. Ali Rantakari's trash looks like the best available option, though.

Several challenges would arise, then:

  • Ensure we're actually facing a supported version of the trash utility.
  • When removing structures of directories and files, that are specified starting from the root Library folder, we should not move the /Library to the trash all together. In order not to flood the trash with individual files and folders, pkg-uninstall would have to comput a minimal set of parent directories that, once moved to the trash, ensure that package files are properly uninstalled.
  • The final pkgutil --forget command would have to be emulated with calls to trash. This might break with any future OS X releases that would implement the receipts database differently.

OS X Trash candidates

  • trash by Ali Rantakari

    • Available in Homebrew: brew info trash
    • Project home: http://hasseg.org/trash/
    • Blog post: http://hasseg.org/blog/post/406/trash-files-from-the-os-x-command-line/
      • Discusses osxutils’ original trash by Sveinbjörn Þórðarson (see below)
      • Discusses osx-trashh by Dave Dribin (see below)
    • Github: https://github.com/ali-rantakari/trash
      • Last update: 2014-12-09
    • Source code: https://github.com/ali-rantakari/trash/blob/master/trash.m
      • Written in C, and Objective-C
      • quite bloated code, but highly commented
      • Sends a NSAppleEventDescriptor (containing all the files to delete) with event class 'core' and event ID 'delo' using the AESendMessage() function (which is faster than AppleScript, according to the author)
      • Can alternatively call FSMoveObjectToTrashSync() when requested to use the system API, though privileged files will still be trashed by the Finder
    • Features:
      • Properly doesn’t follow leaf symlinks
      • Properly shows only one authentication dialog
      • Properly supports multiple volumes trashes
      • Properly supports Finder's Undo and "Put Back" features, updating ~/.Trash/.DS_Store accordingly
      • Properly warns the user that when run as root, the items will go to the trash of the root user, which might not be what the user expects
    • Caveats:
      • Improperly prompts an inerrupting authentication dialog when trashing privileged files, which is not the spirit of any command-line tool

  • trash by Morgan Aldridge

    • Project home: http://www.makkintosshu.com/development#tools-osx
    • Blog post: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/50844/how-to-move-files-to-trash-from-command-line
    • Github: https://github.com/morgant/tools-osx
      • Last update: 2015-01-08
    • Source code: https://github.com/morgant/tools-osx/blob/master/src/trash
      • Written in: plain Bash script
      • Uses one ApplScript command tell application "Finder" to delete POSIX file "<file-path>" per file, which is slow (because sending a list of files would be faster: {(POSIX file "/path/one"), (POSIX file "/path/two")}) and triggers many authentication prompts by the Finder, one for each individual privileged file.
      • Awful bloated code style. Unreadable realpath() function, for instance.
    • Features:
      • Properly doesn’t follow leaf symlinks
      • Properly doesn't clobber existing trashed files upon filename collision
      • Properly supports multiple volumes trashes (when not run from a screen shell)
      • Properly supports Finder's Undo and "Put Back" features, updating ~/.Trash/.DS_Store accordingly (when not run from a screen shell)
    • Caveats:
      • Improperly sends individual AppleScript commands for each item to delete, which is slow
      • Improperly has the Finder prompt individual authentications, when deleting multiple privileged files.
      • Does not delegate to Finder when run from a screen shell (which breaks support for Finder's Undo and "Put Back" and proper multiple volumes trashes)
      • Improperly doesn't warn the user for items going to the trash of the root user, when run as root
      • Improperly prompts inerrupting authentication dialogs when trashing privileged files, which is not the spirit of any command-line tool

  • osxutil's trash by Sveinbjorn Thordarson

    • Project home: http://sveinbjorn.org/osxutils
    • Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/osxutils/
      • Last update: 2004-12-13
    • Source code (SVN): http://osxutils.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/osxutils/osxutils/src/trash?revision=1.1&view=markup
      • Written in: Perl
      • Delegates to the system's mv (i.e. not using any Perl built-in or module)
    • Features:
      • Mere move to the Trash folder
      • Properly doesn’t follow “leaf” symbolic links
      • Properly doesn't clobber existing trashed files upon filename collision
      • Properly doesn't prompt any inerrupting authentication dialog when trashing privileged files, and properly report any errors on /dev/stderr instead
    • Caveats:
      • Improperly has a buggy renaming code, with improper renaming scheme: file, then file copy 1, then file copy 1 copy 1
      • Improperly moves all trashed files onto the same volume
      • Improperly provides no support for Finder's Undo and "Put Back" features

  • improved trash of osxutil's fork by Dave Vasilevsky

    • Available in Homebrew: brew info osxutils
    • Github: https://github.com/vasi/osxutils
      • Last update: 2013-11-26
      • Says he rewrote 'trash' so it properly renames files
    • Source code: https://github.com/vasi/osxutils
      • Written in Perl
      • Uses standard Perl modules for path manipulations
      • Uses the move method of the File::Copy module
    • Features:
      • Properly doesn't clobber any existing trashed files upon filename collision
      • Properly tries trashing all files even when encountering any error like inability to trash a privileged file
      • Properly doesn't prompt any inerrupting authentication dialog when trashing privileged files, and properly report any errors on /dev/stderr instead
    • Caveats:
      • Improperly moves all trashed files onto the same volume
      • Improperly provides no support for Finder's Undo and "Put Back" features

  • osx-trash by Dave Dribin

    • Project home: http://www.dribin.org/dave/osx-trash/
    • Github: https://github.com/semaperepelitsa/osx-trash
      • Last update: 2011-05-01
    • Source code: https://github.com/semaperepelitsa/osx-trash/blob/master/bin/trash
      • Written in Ruby
      • Uses AppleScript via Scripting Bridge on top of RubyCocoa
      • Uses SBApplication.applicationWithBundleIdentifier("com.apple.Finder").items.objectAtLocation(NSURL.fileURLWithPath(Pathname.new(file).realpath.to_s)).delete
    • Features:
      • Properly supports Finder's Undo and "Put Back" features, updating ~/.Trash/.DS_Store accordingly
    • Caveats:
      • Improperly follows leaf symbolic links
      • Improperly prompts inerrupting authentication dialog when trashing privileged files, which is not the spirit of any command-line tool
      • Improperly pops up many authentication dialogs, one for each file (due to a limitation in Scripting Bridge)
      • Improperly doesn't warn the user for items going to the trash of the root user, when run as root
      • Improperly provides no feedback about any errors, like failure to trash a privileged file, and always return success exit code

  • osx-trash by Sindre Sorhus

  • rmtrash by Night Productions