sow rm

sow rm takes packages out of the Desired Membership of the Dists you select and, by default, rebuilds the affected indexes immediately. It never deletes bytes from pool/ — membership and content are separate concepts, and there is no garbage collection.

Synopsis

sow rm PACKAGE... [-c|--check] [--skip] [-j|--jobs N] [-C|--workdir DIR] [-r|--repo NAME] [-d|--dist NAME]... [-T|--timeout DUR | -N|--no-wait] [--json]

Options

--check and --skip are mutually exclusive:

sow rm epel-release -c --skip
usage error: --check and --skip are mutually exclusive

Package references

PACKAGE accepts five forms. The full grammar and disambiguation rules are on Package References; the short version:

A bare name means every version and native architecture of that name in the selected Dists — that is what makes sow rm patroni a useful takedown command. An ambiguous short reference that is not a bare name fails and lists the candidates instead of guessing.

sow ls prints exact sha256: references and canonical coordinates, so you never have to assemble one by hand.

A reference matching nothing is a rejection, not a silent success:

sow rm nosuch -r pigsty -d el9
operation rejected: managed: operation rejected: package reference not found: package reference "nosuch" matches no Desired Membership

There is no --allow-empty, no --all, no --yes and no --source-list.

Preview with –check

-c/--check computes exactly what would be removed, what policy would then decide, and which files an immediate build would touch — and writes nothing at all.

sow rm centos-release -r pigsty -d el9 -c
{"repository":"pigsty","desired_revision":6,"built_generation":6,"dirty":false,"check":true,"removed":[{"dist":"el9","sha256":"ffd9e7bdaa4884831a6c055ada01dac96b84c50a8d518dac409b445af5dadc16","coordinate":"rpm:centos-release-0:6-0.el6.centos.5.x86_64","name":"centos-release"},{"dist":"el9","sha256":"b4111ef2a51542eacc9bd1ebd080da02e53d400f9d172530c75a1e4ac06e7ead","coordinate":"rpm:centos-release-0:7-2.1511.el7.centos.2.10.x86_64","name":"centos-release"}],"dists":["el9"],"changes":[{"op":"add","path":"dists/el9/x86_64/repodata/29eb03d70470cb4ed836017414d6039482e6ee8e4cdfbafe9cc78ba052c8d2dc-filelists.xml.gz","phase":"metadata","size":374,"sha256":"29eb03d70470cb4ed836017414d6039482e6ee8e4cdfbafe9cc78ba052c8d2dc"},{"op":"update","path":"dists/el9/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml","phase":"pointer","size":1511,"sha256":"ef071821e06c9e86ab4f6d2a56906d82bb66df251e79d1086cfd44dc8395513e"},{"op":"delete","path":"dists/el9/x86_64/repodata/85de802ed1249f8693c973ae44d704e3cc5047da571b52c1ddebc8de35a46b60-primary.xml.gz","phase":"delete"}]}

Note both centos-release versions matched the bare name. The changes array is a real delivery plan in payload → metadata → pointer → delete phase order.

--check deliberately does not take the write lock. Combining it with lock flags is a usage error, so nobody can believe a preview is queueing behind a writer:

sow rm centos-release -r pigsty -d el9 -c -T 5s
usage error: rm --check does not accept --timeout or --no-wait

Default behavior: remove and rebuild

Without --check or --skip, rm commits the Desired change and rebuilds every affected Dist before returning. Pool objects stay on disk.

sow rm 'rpm:centos-release-0:6-0.el6.centos.5.x86_64' -r pigsty -d el9
{"operation":"1811402670494469758","repository":"pigsty","desired_revision":6,"built_generation":6,"dirty":false,"check":false,"removed":[{"dist":"el9","sha256":"ffd9e7bdaa4884831a6c055ada01dac96b84c50a8d518dac409b445af5dadc16","coordinate":"rpm:centos-release-0:6-0.el6.centos.5.x86_64","name":"centos-release"}],"dists":["el9"],"changes":[...]}

Like sow build and sow show, rm prints structured JSON on stdout even without --json; adding --json wraps it in the standard envelope.

Removing the last member of a Dist is fine. SOW still renders a valid, signed-if-configured empty index — an empty Packages with a verifiable InRelease, or empty per-architecture repodata/.

–skip

--skip commits the Desired change and marks the Repository dirty without touching the public tree. The old Built Generation stays completely self-consistent for clients.

sow rm 'rpm:centos-release-0:6-0.el6.centos.5.x86_64' -r pigsty -d el9 --skip
{"operation":"1811402670494469758","repository":"pigsty","desired_revision":6,"built_generation":5,"dirty":true,"check":false,"removed":[...],"dists":["el9"],"changes":[]}

sow status -r pigsty
repository=pigsty status=dirty ready_to_copy=false revision=6 generation=5 dirty_dists=el9 pending=0/0 locked=false

changes is empty because nothing was built. Run sow build to converge.

Policy interaction

Removals are Desired-state edits, so policy is re-evaluated over the resulting candidate set — a removal will never resurrect a package that limit previously pushed out. If you remove libpq5 18.3-1 from a limit: 1 Dist, 18.2-1 does not come back; add it again explicitly.

Examples

Safe takedown — preview first, then execute:

sow rm patroni -r pgsql -d el9 -c
sow rm patroni -r pgsql -d el9

Remove one exact object from two Dists at once:

sow rm sha256:d6f332ed157de1d42058ec785b392a1cc4b5836c27830af8fbf083cce29ef0ab -r pgsql -d el9 -d el9-beta

Batch several removals, then rebuild once:

sow rm old-tool legacy-agent -r pgsql -d el9 --skip
sow build -r pgsql -d el9
sow check -r pgsql

Feed the preview plan to another tool:

sow rm patroni -r pgsql -d el9 -c --json | jq -r '.result.changes[] | "\(.phase)\t\(.op)\t\(.path)"'

Exit codes

See also

• Package References — the full reference grammar
• sow ls / show / where — finding the exact reference to remove
• sow add — the inverse operation
• sow build — converging after --skip
• Membership Policy — why removed members do not come back