How do you uninstall a python package that was installed using distutils?

Question

Can you simply delete the directory from your python installation, or are there any lingering files that you must delete?

Answer 1

install --record + xargs rm

sudo python setup.py install --record files.txt
xargs sudo rm -rf < files.txt

removes all files and but leaves empty directories behind.

That is not ideal, it should be enough to avoid package conflicts.

And then you can finish the job manually if you want by reading files.txt, or be braver and automate empty directory removal as well.

A safe helper would be:

python-setup-uninstall() (
  sudo rm -f files.txt
  sudo python setup.py install --record files.txt && \
  xargs rm -rf < files.txt
  sudo rm -f files.txt
)

Tested in Python 2.7.6, Ubuntu 14.04.