美思 技術雜談:How to Remove PKG packages on Mac

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For GUI mac software, AppCleaner is an easy way to safely and cleanly uninstall it on Mac. However, there is no easy method to uninstall PKG packages on Mac.

I have written a small script to uninstall PKG packages on my homebin repo. You can easily download it with curl or wget.


$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cwchen123/homebin/master/removepkg > removepkg
$ chmod +x removepkg
$ mkdir /usr/local/bin
$ mv removepkg /usr/local/bin
{{< / highlight >}}

The script deletes only the files of a package first; then deletes only empty directories of the package.  Therefore, other directories will not be deleted mindlessly.

Use `pkgutil --pkgs` to see which packages to uninstall.  You may use `grep` to search the package.

```console
$ pkgutil --pkgs | grep package_name
{{< / highlight >}}

Before you really uninstall the package, you may look a while these files with `removepkg --dry`.  Say we want to remove Midnight Commander for Mac.

```console
$ removepkg --dry hu.louise.mc.midnightCommanderInstaller.usr.pkg
{{< / highlight >}}

If you are sure to remove the package, repeat the command with `sudo`.  With the same case:

```console
$ sudo removepkg hu.louise.mc.midnightCommanderInstaller.usr.pkg
{{< / highlight >}}