SUMMARY: Can xemacs be removed?

Hi Managers,

SUMMARY

Yes, subset OSFEMACS520 (Xemacs) can be removed without affecting system.

It freed up ~80Mb of disk space (from total partition size 773 Mb).


Thanks to the following for their kind responses;
- Corinne Haesaerts
- Dr Thomas Blinn
- Alan Davis
- John Lanier

Best regards,

Shaun



ORIGINAL QUESTION

We have an Alphaserver 1200 with limited space on the system disk, /usr
partition in particular.

Using du I found directory /usr/lib/xemacs and xemacs-21.1.11 consuming a
large amount of disk space.

I do not use emacs, if I use setld to remove OSFEMACS520, will this remove
these directories ?

Is this safe to do, are there other system functions which rely on this ?



RESPONSES

Corinne Haesaerts (HP);

Sure, but check that no one is using EMACS as editor instead of e.g. VI


---------

Dr Thomas Blinn;

What you propose should work and it is the recommended way to remove
an optional component.  You may find that you have problems with any
future patch kits; the current patch kit model may assume that all of
the system components are installed (or may not, it's never clear, we
don't test much with subsetted installations).  If this system is not
actively patched, just getting rid of xemacs should help.  Of course,
getting more disk or moving things to other file systems might be a
better course.


---------

Alan Davis;

Emacs is not required and can be removed using setld.


---------


John Lanier;

On my system (5.1B), xemacs is not even loaded:

 --> sudo setld -v OSFEMACS520
setld: OSFEMACS520: not currently loaded

Also note that deleting a subset with setld (setld -d) will provide a
warning if the subset has interdependencies:

"If a subset being deleted is required by other subsets installed on the
system, those subsets are listed and you must confirm that the target
subset is to be deleted." ---man setld