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Gaurav Agarwal
Asked: 2014-03-18 08:14:27 +0800 CST

Why is a repository still in /etc/apt/sources.list.d after removing it with add-apt-repository --remove?

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I am trying to remove a repository in 12.04, like so

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:cassou/emacs
sudo apt-get update

but when I run the command 

ls /etc/apt/sources.list.d

I get the name of ppa mentioned in the list

cassou-emacs-precise.list
cassou-emacs-precise.list.save

Why so?

12.04

2 Answers

  1. add-apt-repository --remove doesn't actually remove the repository but disables it. If you want to remove the repository along with any package it may have installed you can by using ppa-purge:

    sudo ppa-purge ppa:cassou/emacs

    http://www.webupd8.org/2012/11/install-ppa-purge-with-multi-arch.html

    NOTE: This will downgrade any packages you might have installed from the PPA to the version available in the main repositories. As explained in man ppa-purge:

    NAME
   ppa-purge - disables a PPA and reverts to official packages
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  2. The repositories have been removed, if you check the contents of those files, you will find them empty. I don't know why they were not removed and I would call that a bug in add-apt-repository unless empty files are removed by default on reboot or similar.

    In any case, for future reference, you can always simply delete the files manually:

    sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cassou-emacs-precise.list*
sudo apt-get update
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