# Gem cleanup/uninstall not dropping old executables?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-cleanup-uninstall-not-dropping-old-executables/179856>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 5, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-cleanup-uninstall-not-dropping-old-executables/179856 "2009-12-05T16:58:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Shot\_SPiotr\_S.S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/e79b87/32.png) [@Shot\_SPiotr\_S.S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Shot_SPiotr_S.S)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-cleanup-uninstall-not-dropping-old-executables/179856/1 "2009-12-05T16:58:14Z")

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Hello, dear readers of ruby-talk.

I’m an avid user of gem update/gem cleanup pair, but I just  
noticed that gem cleanup does not drop old executables.

After ‘gem install art-decomp -v 0.0.0; gem update; gem cleanup’ I still  
have the ad-compare executable (which was in 0.0.0 but was renamed to  
ad-analyse in 0.1.0).

Similarily, if I have both 0.0.0 and 0.1.0 installed and try to gem  
uninstall the 0.0.0 version, it will ask about removing the executables.  
If I decline, no executables get removed (so I end up with both 0.0.0’s  
and 0.1.0’s executables); if I agree, I’m only left with executables  
introduced in 0.1.0.

I can understand gem uninstall’s behaviour, but would it make sense that  
when I uninstall 0.0.0, there’s an option to remove the executables used  
solely by that version? If there was an option for this, gem cleanup  
could use it by default.

I’m writing to ruby-talk because I’m not sure I’m not missing something  
about RubyGems; I’m also not sure where to report a bug – on RubyForge’s  
bug tracker or on Ruby’s Redmine (now that RubyGems are a part of 1.9).

— Shot