differrence between 'yum remove' and 'yum erase'

[Matthew J. Roth]

Christofer C. Bell wrote:
> 
> I agree. This can certainly be a cause for confusion for users coming
> from Debian (or Ubuntu, etc) where there's a distinct difference
> between erase and purge. It seems yum's interpretation of either
> remove or erase is the same as apt's purge option, while apt's erase
> option ... isn't an option with yum. 
> 
> erase - Remove all package files saves those that are marked as
> configuration, allowing the administrator to reinstall the package
> later with configuration already in place.
> 
> purge - Completely remove all package files, including those marked
> as configuration files. 

I disagree.  The documentation is clear and, as Rahul pointed out, removing a command would break backwards compatibility.

Yum is also careful not to completely remove configuration files that have been edited.  Upon package removal, any configuration files that have been edited are saved with ".rpmsave" appended to the original filename.  Apt may provide a different implementation, but the functionality itself is very similar.

Regards,

Matthew Roth
InterMedia Marketing Solutions
Software Engineer and Systems Developer