GNU Stow is a program for managing the installation of software
packages, keeping them separate (/usr/local/stow/emacs
vs. /usr/local/stow/perl
, for example) while making them
appear to be installed in the same place (/usr/local
).
You can read the Stow manual (52k characters) on-line.
Stow is a Perl script which should run correctly under Perl 5.005 and above. You must install Perl before running Stow. For more information about Perl, see http://www.perl.com/perl/.
Stow was inspired by Carnegie Mellon's
Depot
program, but is substantially simpler. Whereas Depot requires
database files to keep things in sync, Stow stores no extra state
between runs, so there's no danger (as there is in Depot) of mangling
directories when file hierarchies don't match the database. Also
unlike Depot, Stow will never delete any files, directories, or links
that appear in a Stow directory (e.g.,
/usr/local/stow/emacs
), so it's always possible to
rebuild the target tree (e.g., /usr/local
).
Stow is free software, licensed under the
GNU General Public License.
Please mail questions and comments to help-stow@gnu.org, and bug reports to bug-stow@gnu.org. For information regarding Stow development, check out our Savannah page.
Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.
Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@www.gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.
Copyright (C) 1996 Bob Glickstein
Copyright (C) 2001 Guillaume Morin
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.