l3build uninstall does not remove added texmf/makeindex repertory

[jfbu]

Brief outline of the bug

This refers not to LaTeX2e itself but to the l3build usage with a checkout of the git repo. Not sure if worth reporting. I did a very quick look for documentation but did not find it in the README.md for example.

When using l3build install a makeindex repertory is created at top level of user home texmf. It is not removed from l3build uninstall.

edit: what is relevant here is more the texmf/makeindex/latex/ and the 2 files it contains than actual texmf/makeindex ; of course uninstall is not to remove texmf/tex and for similar reason should not remove texmf/makeindex but only the specifics things it added there, for whatever reason.

Minimal example showing the (not a) bug

Steps to reproduce:

• clone latex3/latex2e git repo, checkout some commit (perhaps one tagged with a release date).
• examine your user texmf and rename or move a toplevel makeindex repertory if present
• run l3build install from the git clone local repertory
• check that makeindex repertory was created
• run l3build uninstall
• the texmf/makeindex is still there

I understand that the uninstall script is not to remove a repertory which could pre-exist, so this is more an issue of documenting, if at all an issue.

By the way, when applying this procedure with a 2019-10-01 release checkout, the process created files in atexmf/tex/latex-dev. But doing it now again with master as of yesterday when I last updated (8ad83c995ba), the latex files went into texmf/tex/latex. I had left an empty latex-dev and it remained empty.

I actually thought that latex-dev was better to avoid mixing up things with some user patches possibly in tex/latex. The formats should then be created with -dev names if the user is to proceed with some actual use of all this (in contrast with playing around aimlessly as I did, culminating in opening up this ticket).

[FrankMittelbach]

if you check out a develop branch it installs into texmf/tex/latex-dev if you check out the master branch it installs into texmf/tex/latex. The reason being that you may want to have both local (running with pdflatex and pdflatex-dev)

it never deletes empty directories when you do "uninstall" it only drops files.

It also looks as it it only adds the makeindex dir if you do an install from "master" branch (and it definitely doesn't delete it when doing "l3build uninstall" --- I think the latter is a bug (it should delete the .ist files it placed there).

[josephwright]

The MakeIndex files had to be special-cased as we can't install for both master and develop. I'll check where I did that and why we then don't get a clean uninstall.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity.