Description
GNU Stow is a piece of software to manage software that you download in .tar.gz form and install on your system. The problem is very common, you download a program, uncompress, compile and install, simple and easy! But what about when you decide to remove the package again, you've got files floating all over your system, and that is : A MESS! This is were Stow steps in and saves the day!
Get it from GNU or from your distribution of choice. We lucky Debian users just write apt-get install stow :-)
Simple Usage
Basically you have a directory with your the software package, fx. /usr/local/stow/fvwm , and a place in which you wan't the software to "look" like it is in. Because all that stow does is link the files in the software package dir, to the corresponding directory in which it should be installed.
The easiest way to use it is installing the software under /usr/local/stow/packagename and then just "stow" it while being in the /usr/local/stow because the standard function of stow is to install in the parent directory.
The command for "stow'ing" a directory is stow [directory], and to delete the links again is stow -D [directory] but understand that it isn't dependent of the directory but just the name of it, the directory doesn't even need to be there! and stow doesn't remove the directory either, that's up to you to do.
Additional Features
If you don't wan't the standard directories for packages and target you can use the options -d [package dir] and -t [target dir].
Another useful feature of stow is searching for conflicts in the directories, this is accomplished with the -c command.
All in all, stow is one of the most useful perl scripts i''ve ever installed, it keeps my system tidy and easy to administer.