Julia versions assumed removed even if failing to remove them, leads to orphaned versions.

[ghyatzo]

Hello,

I've been getting these errors: WARNING: Failed to delete C:\Users\User\.julia\juliaup\.\julia-1.11.2+0.x64.w64.mingw32. You can try to delete at a later point by running 'juliaup gc'. after installing new versions

interestingly there seems to be an extra . that is not normalized (after juliaup).

also, running juliaup gc just returns, without deleting or printing anything.
It seems like there is a problem with path normalization.

[DNF2]

Is there anything new on this issue? Are the maintainers aware of it?

[StefanKarpinski]

Are you running that version of Julia elsewhere when this happens? Windows won't let you delete files that are open.

[ghyatzo]

The installation of 1.11.5 didn't cause any issues this time around and 1.11.4 was indeed removed.

It seems #1146 could solve the leftover versions issue. Since at the moment what probably happens is that it tries to delete it, silently fails for some reason, assumes it got deleted and removes it from the configuration file.

EDIT: The gc at the moment does nothing since technically juliaup only sees the currently installed version, so there is nothing to delete. It might have been indeed a case of having an older version of julia open

[ghyatzo]

seems the likely culprit, just installed 1.11.4 opened a julia session with that version and attempted to remove it.
the error:

WARNING: Failed to delete C:\Users\camillo.schenone\.julia\juliaup\.\julia-1.11.4+0.x64.w64.mingw32. You can try to delete at a later point by running `juliaup gc`.
Julia '1.11.4' successfully removed.

The issue: it actually deletes it from the configuration file, so it becomes orphaned and never removed again.

State of the juliaup.json after the above error message:

{
  "Default": "release",
  "InstalledVersions": {
    "1.11.5+0.x64.w64.mingw32": {
      "Path": ".\\julia-1.11.5+0.x64.w64.mingw32"
    }
  },
  "InstalledChannels": {
    "release": {
      "Version": "1.11.5+0.x64.w64.mingw32"
    }
  },
  "Settings": {},
  "Overrides": [],
  "LastVersionDbUpdate": "2025-04-25T18:58:21.498286700Z"
}

I understand why juliaup goes on, but it should at least not remove it from the configuration file so that running juliaup gc actually does something.

Also the error message could be mention the possibility that having that version of julia open might be why it doesn't remove it.