"GNU Stow is a symlink farm manager which takes distinct packages of software and/or data located in separate directories on the filesystem, and makes them appear to be installed in the same place."
The idea is that instead of installing package foopkg directly into /usr/local, you could install it to /opt/foopkg-v1.2.3. Then you can run stow to make a bunch of symlinks like /usr/local/bin/foo -> /opt/foopkg-v1.2.3/bin/foo. Upgrade it to a new version, re-run stow, and now all the symlinks point to /opt/foopkg-v4.5.6/bin/foo and so on. It's pretty nifty.
However, I used it more for managing dotfiles in my home directory than anything else, making links like ~/.vimrc -> ~/src/my-config-repo/.vimrc . I much prefer using chezmoi for that now.
"GNU Stow is a symlink farm manager which takes distinct packages of software and/or data located in separate directories on the filesystem, and makes them appear to be installed in the same place."
The idea is that instead of installing package foopkg directly into /usr/local, you could install it to /opt/foopkg-v1.2.3. Then you can run stow to make a bunch of symlinks like /usr/local/bin/foo -> /opt/foopkg-v1.2.3/bin/foo. Upgrade it to a new version, re-run stow, and now all the symlinks point to /opt/foopkg-v4.5.6/bin/foo and so on. It's pretty nifty.
However, I used it more for managing dotfiles in my home directory than anything else, making links like ~/.vimrc -> ~/src/my-config-repo/.vimrc . I much prefer using chezmoi for that now.