On 14 Apr 99, at 10:51, Surplusmachinery.com wrote:

> At which point, begs the question...Why do unstallers ask *me* if I
> want to delete shared files, etc....I was kind of relying on the
> unistall program to make those decisions...If I wanted to get *that*
> much knowledge of programming, I probably would no longer need the
> uninstall program...

  There are some problems which are terribly *hard* to solve in
software; some of them are things that a not-too-sophisticated human
has little trouble with.  [I have encountered such problems before;
understanding how people can do this is still a matter of much
speculation and some research.]

  A "shared file" is one that *may* be used by more than one
application.  If it didn't come included with the OS, an uninstaller
that monitors installation processes (most do, these days) can know
which application installed which files, but there is no *practical*
way for it to be sure which of the applications you've installed since
*would* have installed that file because they need it, but didn't
because you already had it.
  If you don't know, the *safe* answer is to tell it "no, do not delete
shared files".  [If you chose this option, you're not really entitled
to complain that the uninstaller doesn't remove all traces of the
application....]

  Some uninstallers watch system activity all the time, in order to
spot when any application makes use of any shared file.  Over time,
this can arrive at a "pretty good" idea of what's needed and what
isn't.  But (a) it's not foolproof [you probably don't run tax
preparation software, for example, between June and November], and (b)
there's a little bit of a performance impact.

  Basically, the uninstaller is asking you to weigh the risk of
breaking some other applications -- it doesn't/can't know which ones --
against the importance of recovering disk space.  An uninstaller that
always chooses the safe option [instead of bothering you with the
choice] will get negative reviews for leaving stuff behind that in fact
could have been removed -- it just had no way to know it.


David G

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