Re: SW under /usr/local/

[cjw44@flatline.org.uk (Colin Watson)]

Willy Lee <willy2@jps.net> wrote:
>"Colin" == Colin Watson <cjw44@flatline.org.uk> writes:
>> Sven Burgener <svenb@bluewin.ch> wrote:
>>> I use GNU stow, but never actually saw anyone suggesting this to be
>>> *the* method.
>
>> You have now ;) That's exactly how I deal with it, and I haven't
>> seen anything that can do the job as well ...
>> 
>> And the symlink algorithm it uses just *rocks*.
>
>You have piqued my curiosity.  What is GNU stow, why is it so cool,
>and is there a URL I should look at?

'apt-get install stow'

The idea is that, instead of installing locally installed software into
random directories in /usr/local and then ending up with them all mixed
up and with no idea what to do if you ever want to uninstall them again,
you install the software into /usr/local/stow/<package-name> instead.
Then you cd to /usr/local/stow and type 'stow <package-name>'. It looks
through the /usr/local/stow/<package-name> tree and creates the minimal
set of symlinks in /usr/local necessary to make the package look like it
had been installed straight into /usr/local in the first place - so,
with just one package you'll probably just have /usr/local/bin symlinked
to /usr/local/stow/quake/bin or whatever, but when you install a second
package it'll split up the symlinks as necessary.

When you want to uninstall the package, you just cd to /usr/local/stow
again and type 'stow -D <package-name>', and it'll do the symlink magic
in reverse; then you can delete /usr/local/stow/<package-name> in one
go.

-- 
Colin Watson                                     [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]