Apt-get has asymetric command names for installing and removing

[Rich Jones]

When a person uses apt-get to install a package, they say

apt-get install packagename

It would make sense that

apt-get uninstall packagename

would have the desired effect. However, instead they are met with:

E: Invalid operation uninstall

Which is a rather unpleasant and confusing response. The problem is that these commands are asymmetric, a problem which is unfortunately common in the free software landscape.

The solution is trivial: add a simple alias to map 'uninstall' to the 'remove' function. I can fix this myself if somebody approves this bug.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

reassign 249021 apt

[Michael Gilbert (michael-s-gilbert)]

tag 249021 wontfix

> When removing packages using apt-get, the command is "apt-get remove".
> As the command to install is "apt-get install", I find myself occasionally
> mistakenly typing "apt-get uninstall" to remove packages. It would be useful
> therefore if "uninstall" were to be added as a synonym for "remove".

in order to maintain simplicity, you only want there to be one way to
do things. hence providing synonyms for commands is a bad idea. the
user has a lot of avenues to figure out the correct syntax. they can
read the man page or search the web. and i bet they discover "remove"
pretty quickly even if they are used to things being called
"uninstall". so, i recommend that this issue not be fixed.

[Rich Jones (richwjones)]

When a person uses apt-get to install a package, they say

apt-get install packagename

It would make sense that

apt-get uninstall packagename

would have the desired effect. However, instead they are met with:

E: Invalid operation uninstall

Which is a rather unpleasant and confusing response. The problem is that these commands are asymmetric, a problem which is unfortunately common in the free software landscape.

The solution is trivial: add a simple alias to map 'uninstall' to the 'remove' function. I can fix this myself if somebody approves this bug.

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention. Unfortunately a paper cut should be a small usability issue that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix. I'm afraid this bug can't be addressed as part of this project. This does not impact the average user's default Ubuntu experience.

[Rich Jones (richwjones)]

The response giving was very debian-minded, not ubuntu-like. So where do we go from here? Just leave it cause upstream said so? Or is this a valid concern?