What is the rationale behind vcpkg remove <package> only deregistering a package?

[Nullarity]

When I run vcpkg remove (not recurse), vcpkg removes the package from the installed folder (i.e., it is no longer “active” in your environment), but it does not necessarily remove the old build artifacts and cached source from other folders.

How often in real-world scenarios does keeping caches and partial builds benefit developers, rather than complete cleanup?

[Neumann-A]

vcpkg remove has no insight where the packages folder and buildtree lies. There are switches to make the install command remove all other build artifacts.

[Neumann-A]

vcpkg install --clean-after-build ?

[Nullarity]

no, it will not clean cache, next time you run vcpkg install package, it will be installed from $HOME/.cache/vcpkg/archives

[Neumann-A]

no, it will not clean cache, next time you run vcpkg install package, it will be installed from $HOME/.cache/vcpkg/archives

so you want to get rid of the binary cache for the port you are installing. Why do you want to do that?

does not necessarily remove the old build artifacts and cached source from other folders.

did not specify that clearly.

[Nullarity]

Unfortunately, I don't know how to make my question clearer. For me, it is very simple: if I run vcpkg remove package, I expect that the next time I run vcpkg install package, it will be built in my current (and probably changed since last build) environment. vcpkg does not provide this functionality, and vcpkg install --clean-after-build makes no methodological sense to me.

[Neumann-A]

I expect that the next time I run vcpkg install package, it will be built in my current (and probably changed since last build) environment

It will only be rebuild from source if there has been a change to the abi hash of the port. If there has not been any detectable change vcpkg will pull from the binary cache to avoid the rebuild. You can completely deactivate that feature if you want that.