el-get-remove wipes out entire el-get directory

[zwass]

Not yet sure how to repro this, but while spending a lot of time playing with creating a new setup using el-get, I've managed to wipe out the entire el-get directory when calling el-get-remove. This then causes the entire bootstrap process and re-downloading of all the packages on the next sync call.

Just now it occurred when I did M-x el-get-remove auctex.

Will update when I have more information.

[zwass]

It seems as though the status of all the packages change to "required", and then el-get wipes them out.

[Silex]

FWIW I once experienced the same... after I did install and remove some packages heavily, maybe because one of the install/remove process wasn't finished yet?

[dimitri]

I guess we would need some mode details to be able to fix it, and yes that behavior is a bug I want to fix.

[Silex]

I just reexperienced it! It completely removed my packages directory... I'll try to reproduce.

After an el-get-remove, el-get told me it couldn't write to the status.el file, and my packages directory was gone.

Here are the relevant parts of my config:

(if (eq system-type 'windows-nt)
    (defconst silex-emacs-directory "~/../My Documents/My Dropbox/emacs")
    (defconst silex-emacs-directory "~/Dropbox/emacs"))

;; el-get
(setq el-get-dir (concat silex-emacs-directory "/packages/"))
(add-to-list 'load-path (concat el-get-dir "/el-get"))
(require 'el-get)

(setq el-get-packages '(
  ;; lots of packages here
  ))

;; Fetch packages
(el-get 'sync el-get-packages)

[Silex]

Ok, I think I found how... just do M-x el-get-remove and don't enter any package... just press enter. Everything is gone.

I guess that is the root of the problem... then there's probably some other problem/PEBKAC, when sometimes you do type a package name but somehow "" is still sent to el-get-remove. But this is a minor inconvenience if el-get-remove "" wouldn't remove all the packages :-/

Can you make it so submitting an empty string is an error instead of the current behavior?

[DarwinAwardWinner]

We should change el-get-rmdir to throw an error if pdir is not a
subdirectory of el-get-package-directory. Then hopefully we will
catch this.

[dimitri]

I think I got it. Thanks for the report and the suggestion.

[Silex]

@dimitri: I now have this problem:

error: el-get-rmdir: directory '/home/silex/Dropbox/emacs/packages/google-maps' of package 'google-maps' 
is not inside 'el-get-dir' ('/home/silex/Dropbox/emacs/packages/').`