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 does not delete bytes from pool/ — membership and content are separate concepts, and reclamation is the separate conservative sow gc operation.

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 demo -d el9 -c
preview repository=demo operation= dists=el9 memberships=2 revision=2 generation=00000000000000000003 dirty=false changes=2
membership dist=el9 name="centos-release" coordinate="rpm:centos-release-0:6-0.el6.centos.5.x86_64" sha256:ffd9e7bdaa4884831a6c055ada01dac96b84c50a8d518dac409b445af5dadc16
membership dist=el9 name="centos-release" coordinate="rpm:centos-release-0:7-2.1511.el7.centos.2.10.x86_64" sha256:b4111ef2a51542eacc9bd1ebd080da02e53d400f9d172530c75a1e4ac06e7ead
change op=update phase=pointer path="dists/el9/aarch64/repodata/repomd.xml" size=1509 sha256:1cfe38698967d11384f1a985618d75f5e690d1284accf951262fc663fa9afc81
change op=update phase=pointer path="dists/el9/x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml" size=1509 sha256:1cfe38698967d11384f1a985618d75f5e690d1284accf951262fc663fa9afc81

Note both centos-release versions matched the bare name. The change lines are a real delivery plan in payload → metadata → pointer → delete phase order. Use --json when another program needs the corresponding removed[] and changes[] arrays.

Preview uses the same candidate-configuration and integrity preflight as the mutation. A preview that fails that guard is not evidence that the write would succeed.

--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 demo -d el9
removed repository=demo operation=2283442100870457321 dists=el9 memberships=1 revision=2 generation=00000000000000000003 dirty=false changes=8
membership dist=el9 name="centos-release" coordinate="rpm:centos-release-0:6-0.el6.centos.5.x86_64" sha256:ffd9e7bdaa4884831a6c055ada01dac96b84c50a8d518dac409b445af5dadc16

The summary is followed by one change line per affected file (eight in this run). Add --json to receive the same result as a stable 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-0:7-2.1511.el7.centos.2.10.x86_64' --skip -r demo -d el9
removed repository=demo operation=314678479940914827 dists=el9 memberships=1 revision=4 generation=00000000000000000004 dirty=true changes=0
membership dist=el9 name="centos-release" coordinate="rpm:centos-release-0:7-2.1511.el7.centos.2.10.x86_64" sha256:b4111ef2a51542eacc9bd1ebd080da02e53d400f9d172530c75a1e4ac06e7ead

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, and 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
• sow retain and sow gc — when bytes can be reclaimed