NAME¶
stow - software package installation manager
SYNOPSIS¶
stow [ options ] package ...
DESCRIPTION¶
This manual page describes GNU Stow @VERSION@, a program for managing the
installation of software packages. This is not the definitive documentation
for stow; for that, see the info manual.
Stow is a tool for managing the installation of multiple software packages in
the same run-time directory tree. One historical difficulty of this task has
been the need to administer, upgrade, install, and remove files in independent
packages without confusing them with other files sharing the same filesystem
space. For instance, it is common to install Perl and Emacs in
/usr/local. When one does so, one winds up (as of Perl 4.036 and Emacs
19.22) with the following files in
/usr/local/man/man1:
a2p.1;
ctags.1;
emacs.1;
etags.1;
h2ph.1;
perl.1;
and
s2p.1. Now suppose it's time to uninstall Perl. Which man pages get
removed? Obviously
perl.1 is one of them, but it should not be the
administrator's responsibility to memorize the ownership of individual files
by separate packages.
The approach used by Stow is to install each package into its own tree, then use
symbolic links to make it appear as though the files are installed in the
common tree. Administration can be performed in the package's private tree in
isolation from clutter from other packages. Stow can then be used to update
the symbolic links. The structure of each private tree should reflect the
desired structure in the common tree; i.e. (in the typical case) there should
be a
bin directory containing executables, a
man/man1 directory
containing section 1 man pages, and so on.
Stow was inspired by Carnegie Mellon's Depot program, but is substantially
simpler and safer. Whereas Depot required database files to keep things in
sync, Stow stores no extra state between runs, so there's no danger (as there
was 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).
TERMINOLOGY¶
A "package" is a related collection of files and directories that you
wish to administer as a unit -- e.g., Perl or Emacs -- and that needs to be
installed in a particular directory structure -- e.g., with
bin,
lib, and
man subdirectories.
A "target directory" is the root of a tree in which one or more
packages wish to
appear to be installed. A common, but by no means the
only such location is
/usr/local. The examples in this manual page will
use
/usr/local as the target directory.
A "stow directory" is the root of a tree containing separate packages
in private subtrees. When Stow runs, it uses the current directory as the
default stow directory. The examples in this manual page will use
/usr/local/stow as the stow directory, so that individual packages will
be, for example,
/usr/local/stow/perl and
/usr/local/stow/emacs.
An "installation image" is the layout of files and directories
required by a package, relative to the target directory. Thus, the
installation image for Perl includes: a
bin directory containing
perl and
a2p (among others); an
info directory containing
Texinfo documentation; a
lib/perl directory containing Perl libraries;
and a
man/man1 directory containing man pages.
A "package directory" is the root of a tree containing the
installation image for a particular package. Each package directory must
reside in a stow directory -- e.g., the package directory
/usr/local/stow/perl must reside in the stow directory
/usr/local/stow. The "name" of a package is the name of its
directory within the stow directory -- e.g.,
perl.
Thus, the Perl executable might reside in
/usr/local/stow/perl/bin/perl,
where
/usr/local is the target directory,
/usr/local/stow is the
stow directory,
/usr/local/stow/perl is the package directory, and
bin/perl within is part of the installation image.
A "symlink" is a symbolic link. A symlink can be "relative"
or "absolute". An absolute symlink names a full path; that is, one
starting from
/. A relative symlink names a relative path; that is, one
not starting from
/. The target of a relative symlink is computed
starting from the symlink's own directory. Stow only creates relative
symlinks.
OPTIONS¶
The stow directory is assumed to be the value of the "STOW_DIR"
environment variable or if unset the current directory, and the target
directory is assumed to be the parent of the current directory (so it is
typical to execute
stow from the directory
/usr/local/stow).
Each
package given on the command line is the name of a package in the
stow directory (e.g.,
perl). By default, they are installed into the
target directory (but they can be deleted instead using "-D").
- -n
- --no
- Do not perform any operations that modify the filesystem;
merely show what would happen.
- -d DIR
- --dir=DIR
- Set the stow directory to "DIR" instead of the
current directory. This also has the effect of making the default target
directory be the parent of "DIR".
- -t DIR
- --target=DIR
- Set the target directory to "DIR" instead of the
parent of the stow directory.
- -v
- --verbose[=N]
- Send verbose output to standard error describing what Stow
is doing. Verbosity levels are 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4; 0 is the default. Using
"-v" or "--verbose" increases the verbosity by one;
using `--verbose=N' sets it to N.
- -S
- --stow
- Stow the packages that follow this option into the target
directory. This is the default action and so can be omitted if you are
only stowing packages rather than performing a mixture of
stow/delete/restow actions.
- -D
- --delete
- Unstow the packages that follow this option from the target
directory rather than installing them.
- -R
- --restow
- Restow packages (first unstow, then stow again). This is
useful for pruning obsolete symlinks from the target tree after updating
the software in a package.
- --adopt
- Warning! This behaviour is specifically intended to
alter the contents of your stow directory. If you do not want that, this
option is not for you.
When stowing, if a target is encountered which already exists but is a plain
file (and hence not owned by any existing stow package), then normally
Stow will register this as a conflict and refuse to proceed. This option
changes that behaviour so that the file is moved to the same relative
place within the package's installation image within the stow directory,
and then stowing proceeds as before. So effectively, the file becomes
adopted by the stow package, without its contents changing.
- --no-folding
- Disable folding of newly stowed directories when stowing,
and refolding of newly foldable directories when unstowing.
- --ignore=REGEX
- Ignore files ending in this Perl regex.
- --defer=REGEX
- Don't stow files beginning with this Perl regex if the file
is already stowed to another package.
- --override=REGEX
- Force stowing files beginning with this Perl regex if the
file is already stowed to another package.
- -V
- --version
- Show Stow version number, and exit.
- -h
- --help
- Show Stow command syntax, and exit.
INSTALLING PACKAGES¶
The default action of Stow is to install a package. This means creating symlinks
in the target tree that point into the package tree. Stow attempts to do this
with as few symlinks as possible; in other words, if Stow can create a single
symlink that points to an entire subtree within the package tree, it will
choose to do that rather than create a directory in the target tree and
populate it with symlinks.
For example, suppose that no packages have yet been installed in
/usr/local; it's completely empty (except for the
stow
subdirectory, of course). Now suppose the Perl package is installed. Recall
that it includes the following directories in its installation image:
bin;
info;
lib/perl;
man/man1. Rather than
creating the directory
/usr/local/bin and populating it with symlinks
to
../stow/perl/bin/perl and
../stow/perl/bin/a2p (and so on),
Stow will create a single symlink,
/usr/local/bin, which points to
stow/perl/bin. In this way, it still works to refer to
/usr/local/bin/perl and
/usr/local/bin/a2p, and fewer symlinks
have been created. This is called "tree folding", since an entire
subtree is "folded" into a single symlink.
To complete this example, Stow will also create the symlink
/usr/local/info pointing to
stow/perl/info; the symlink
/usr/local/lib pointing to
stow/perl/lib; and the symlink
/usr/local/man pointing to
stow/perl/man.
Now suppose that instead of installing the Perl package into an empty target
tree, the target tree is not empty to begin with. Instead, it contains several
files and directories installed under a different system-administration
philosophy. In particular,
/usr/local/bin already exists and is a
directory, as are
/usr/local/lib and
/usr/local/man/man1. In
this case, Stow will descend into
/usr/local/bin and create symlinks to
../stow/perl/bin/perl and
../stow/perl/bin/a2p (etc.), and it
will descend into
/usr/local/lib and create the tree-folding symlink
perl pointing to
../stow/perl/lib/perl, and so on. As a rule,
Stow only descends as far as necessary into the target tree when it can create
a tree-folding symlink.
The time often comes when a tree-folding symlink has to be undone because
another package uses one or more of the folded subdirectories in its
installation image. This operation is called "splitting open" a
folded tree. It involves removing the original symlink from the target tree,
creating a true directory in its place, and then populating the new directory
with symlinks to the newly-installed package
and to the old package
that used the old symlink. For example, suppose that after installing Perl
into an empty
/usr/local, we wish to install Emacs. Emacs's
installation image includes a
bin directory containing the
emacs
and
etags executables, among others. Stow must make these files appear
to be installed in
/usr/local/bin, but presently
/usr/local/bin
is a symlink to
stow/perl/bin. Stow therefore takes the following
steps: the symlink
/usr/local/bin is deleted; the directory
/usr/local/bin is created; links are made from
/usr/local/bin to
../stow/emacs/bin/emacs and
../stow/emacs/bin/etags; and links
are made from
/usr/local/bin to
../stow/perl/bin/perl and
../stow/perl/bin/a2p.
When splitting open a folded tree, Stow makes sure that the symlink it is about
to remove points inside a valid package in the current stow directory.
Stow will never delete anything that it doesn't own.¶
Stow "owns" everything living in the target tree that points into a
package in the stow directory. Anything Stow owns, it can recompute if lost.
Note that by this definition, Stow doesn't "own" anything
in
the stow directory or in any of the packages.
If Stow needs to create a directory or a symlink in the target tree and it
cannot because that name is already in use and is not owned by Stow, then a
conflict has arisen. See the "Conflicts" section in the info manual.
DELETING PACKAGES¶
When the "-D" option is given, the action of Stow is to delete a
package from the target tree. Note that Stow will not delete anything it
doesn't "own". Deleting a package does
not mean removing it
from the stow directory or discarding the package tree.
To delete a package, Stow recursively scans the target tree, skipping over the
stow directory (since that is usually a subdirectory of the target tree) and
any other stow directories it encounters (see "Multiple stow
directories" in the info manual). Any symlink it finds that points into
the package being deleted is removed. Any directory that contained only
symlinks to the package being deleted is removed. Any directory that, after
removing symlinks and empty subdirectories, contains only symlinks to a single
other package, is considered to be a previously "folded" tree that
was "split open." Stow will re-fold the tree by removing the
symlinks to the surviving package, removing the directory, then linking the
directory back to the surviving package.
SEE ALSO¶
The full documentation for
stow is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the
info and
stow programs are properly installed at your site, the
command
info stow
should give you access to the complete manual.
BUGS¶
Please report bugs in Stow using the Debian bug tracking system.
Currently known bugs include:
- •
- The empty-directory problem.
If package foo includes an empty directory -- say, foo/bar --
then if no other package has a bar subdirectory, everything's fine.
If another stowed package quux, has a bar subdirectory, then
when stowing, targetdir/bar will be "split open" and the
contents of quux/bar will be individually stowed. So far, so good.
But when unstowing quux, targetdir/bar will be removed, even
though foo/bar needs it to remain. A workaround for this problem is
to create a file in foo/bar as a placeholder. If you name that file
.placeholder, it will be easy to find and remove such files when
this bug is fixed.
- •
- When using multiple stow directories (see "Multiple
stow directories" in the info manual), Stow fails to "split
open" tree-folding symlinks (see "Installing packages" in
the info manual) that point into a stow directory which is not the one in
use by the current Stow command. Before failing, it should search the
target of the link to see whether any element of the path contains a
.stow file. If it finds one, it can "learn" about the
cooperating stow directory to short-circuit the .stow search the
next time it encounters a tree-folding symlink.
AUTHOR¶
This man page was originally constructed by Charles Briscoe-Smith from parts of
Stow's info manual, and then converted to POD format by Adam Spiers. The info
manual contains the following notice, which, as it says, applies to this
manual page, too. The text of the section entitled "GNU General Public
License" can be found in the file
/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2
on any Debian GNU/Linux system. If you don't have access to a Debian system,
or the GPL is not there, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59
Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA, 02111-1307, USA.
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright (C) 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 by Bob Glickstein
<bobg+stow@zanshin.com>; 2000, 2001 by Guillaume Morin; 2007 by Kahlil
Hodgson; 2011 by Adam Spiers; and others.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual
provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all
copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual
under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that the section
entitled "GNU General Public License" is included with the modified
manual, and provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed
under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into
another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except
that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the
Free Software Foundation.