Uninstallation instructions

[ronaktanna]

Hi,

I see there is a lot of amazing support for installation, however, I find various articles scattered online across the past few years on uninstallation. Is it possible to update the documentation with clear instructions on how to uninstall node.js from the system? The amount of online articles suggest a lot of people are wanting to uninstall it. This kind of guidance would come in handy for several people. If it is already there somewhere, I would really appreciate it if you could point me to the resource.

Thanks so much for all the work!

[aduh95]

I guess we would need to make a document similar to https://github.com/nodejs/help/wiki/Installation, but covering uninstall instead of installation. Is it something like that you are looking for?

[ronaktanna]

That would be perfect. If there are different steps for uninstallation if we use different methodologies for installation (eg: homebrew vs building from source), then each of those separately. That's what I was looking for.

[marsonya]

That would be perfect. If there are different steps for uninstallation if we use different methodologies for installation (eg: homebrew vs building from source), then each of those separately. That's what I was looking for.

That makes sense. Along with different methodologies, we would also need to have instructions for various Operating Systems (at least macOS, linux and windows).

[gireeshpunathil]

feel free to come up with a PR. Based on my experience, a single PR may take long time as a single person may not be able to cover all the platforms. So let us start with a PR for a trivial platform, and then we can incrementally build on it.

[marsonya]

feel free to come up with a PR. Based on my experience, a single PR may take long time as a single person may not be able to cover all the platforms. So let us start with a PR for a trivial platform, and then we can incrementally build on it.

understood. may i come up with PR for macOS (OS) with brew (methodology)?

[ronaktanna]

Uninstallation docs for the .pkg file installations are probably the ones I would be looking for. Since the .pkg file is a click install and runs without needing access to internet, it would be convenient to cover that first IMO as homebrew may not be installed on an offline machine.

[ronaktanna]

Thanks for the response guys, appreciate it! Will look forward to a PR on docs associated to this. :)

[bartdorsey]

Honestly IMHO, Node.JS should include an Uninstaller in the download. It's unacceptable in this day and age for a program to spew files across my system and not include a way to uninstall itself.

[jazzmanro]

I subscribe to this. Current situation is unacceptable. Official website throws you in the path of using the .pkg. And after you do it and you discover that package managers like brew handle this better (as it can also uninstall), question is, how can I clean up after .pkg? If the official way to install is the .pkg there must be an official way to uninstall. How can I trust diferent guides over the internet? How can I know they are up to date and I'm not cleaning up too little or too much?