How to delete a locally installed version of pgf?

Question

I have a locally installed pgf in my local texmf tree. Now my tex distribution finally caught up and the version of pfg in the package manager is newer than my locally installed version. How can I delete the local version?

Answer 1

You have to delete all associated files manually and then refresh the filename database (FNDB). The details of this process depend on your OS.

Answer 2

To find out what files, you can get hold of the original archive that you got pgf from and list the files, then you can use that list to delete the right files.

I'm using zsh on a Linux machine, and I downloaded the pgf tree into my Desktop folder, so in my texmf directory, I could do:

for f in $(unzip -ql ~/Desktop/pgf_2.10.tds.zip); do
[[ -e $f && -f $f ]] && rm $f
done

To remove any empty directories, you could then do

for f in $(unzip -ql ~/Desktop/pgf_2.10.tds.zip); do
[[ -e $f && -d $f ]] && rmdir -p $f
done

Note that rmdir only deletes empty directories so it's safe. You have to do this afterwards, and you have to specify the -p (remove parents) because directories tend to be listed first in the archive, so in the archive you might have:

a
a/b
a/b/c.txt

but when deleting them, you need to delete them in reverse order.

(I suppose you could modify the original script to reverse the order:

for f in $(unzip -ql ~/Desktop/pgf_2.10.tds.zip | tac); do
[[ -e $f && -f $f ]] && rm $f
[[ -e $f && -d $f ]] && rmdir $f
done

if you really wanted to)

You could also just move them out of the way, rather than deleting them. And I'd recommend making a backup of your texmf tree before doing this in case you accidentally delete a file that you shouldn't have done.

Answer 3

Thorsten's and Andrew's answers are excellent, and will pertain to any package that you have installed locally which now needs to be removed. However, there may be an easier way. It seems that all files that the pgf package contains, at least in version 2.10, is contained in one of the following directories:

doc/generic/pgf/
scripts/pgf/
source/latex/pgf/
tex/context/third/pgf/
tex/latex/pgf/
tex/plain/pgf/
tex/generic/pgf/

except the README file that is in the root of the archive. As far as I can tell, no other package should put anything in those directories, so removing these 7 directories with their contents and refreshing the filename database should do the job.

Answer 4

This looks for all the subdirectories named pgf in the user's texmf directory, then deletes them.

find ${TEXMFHOME} -type d -name pgf | xargs rm -rf  

Use rm -rf with caution, of course!

Answer 5

In miktex I don't install a local pgf in "the" local texmf tree. I put all the pgf-files in a new texmf tree only for pgf (called eg. testpgf) and then "mount" this tree as a new local texmf tree in miktex settings. When I no longer need this pgf, I "unmount" and then delete the complete tree.