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Questions tagged [stow]

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.

For example, /usr/local/bin could contain symlinks to files within /usr/local/stow/emacs/bin, /usr/local/stow/perl/bin etc., and likewise recursively for any other subdirectories such as .../share, .../man, and so on.

This is particularly useful for keeping track of system-wide and per-user installations of software built from source, but can also facilitate a more controlled approach to management of configuration files in the user's home directory, especially when coupled with version control systems.

Stow is implemented as a combination of a Perl script providing a CLI interface, and a backend Perl module which does most of the work. Stow is Free Software, licensed under the GNU General Public License.

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Differences between XStow and Stow

According to the official XStow news, the package was last updated on 2010-07-22. On the other hand, the GNU Stow git repository (mantained by Adam Spiers) had activity just 10 days ago, and the latest stable version came out on Feb. 18, 2012. Most…
Amelio Vazquez-Reina
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GNU Stow: How to stow only selected files/folders?

Let's assume the following structure of a folder called scripts. ├── scripts │   └── .scripts │   ├── script1 │   ├── script2 │   └── script3 │   └── .config │   ├── script4 │   ├── script5 │   └── script6 When using stow…
orschiro
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Can GNU Stow use a stow directory that is a symbolic link?

Consider this script. #! /usr/bin/env bash mkdir -p target mkdir -p mydir/package/ touch mydir/package/file ln --symbolic mydir mylink file mylink stow --verbose --dir=./mylink --target=./target package file target/file The output is mylink:…
Nathaniel M. Beaver
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Opposite of `--adopt` option for GNU Stow?

I'm using GNU Stow to manage my dotfiles as per this guide. This works well for cases where there is no pre-existing dotfile on the machine. E.g. if there is no file ~/.config/foo.cfg then the following works well: ~/.dotfiles$ mkdir -p…
JBentley
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Stow doesn't use the "ignore" option given in the rc file

Summary --ignore= lines that I put in my .stowrc does not work. When running Stow, it says "Loading defaults from .stowrc", yet it has no effect. But passing the --ignore= lines to the command directly works. Problem Assume this…
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GNU stow linking all files instead of only binary

What must I do to have stow only linking the binaries (and maybe the man pages) correctly? I want to use GNU stow to manage local installs on my machine. However, stow does not simply symlinks the binary, but all files in the program folder. What I…
Da Frenk
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Dealing with GNU Stow conflicts

What is the recommended way of dealing with GNU Stow conflicts? I tried to stow readline-6.2 and got the following warning: > stow readline-6.2 Loading defaults from /home/josh/.stowrc WARNING! stowing readline-6.2 would cause conflicts: *…
Amelio Vazquez-Reina
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Pre-specifying a default GNU Stow target-directory

TLDR: Can I pre-define a stow folder other than /usr/local with GNU Stow? I do not have admin privileges on the machine I use for work, and I was told that I could use GNU Stow to manage my installations. The tool looks great, but everywhere in the…
Amelio Vazquez-Reina
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Stow - no configure script

In the program GNU Stow, the symlink farm manager/package manager/whatever you want to call it, you can run the following commands to install a package to /usr/local: ./configure --prefix=/usr/local make sudo make prefix=/usr/local/stow/foo-1.2…
fosslinux
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dotfiles: can/should(?) gnu stow make hard links, so I can still use xfce settings gui programs

I'm trying to manage my dotfiles under version control. My dotfiles repos contains a xfce-base folder, this folder contains the .config/xfce4/.../xy-setting.xml stuff. I can stow, or better, symlink to the correct place, everything works as…
benzkji
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Stow to destination root /: existing target is not owned by stow

I'm trying to stow a package to the "root" / # cd ~/.dotfiles # sudo stow -t / kraken WARNING! stowing kraken would cause conflicts: * existing target is not owned by stow: lib All operations aborted. My package looks like this: kraken ├──…
Gabriel
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stow: No packages to stow or unstow

The following command works: % pwd /home/ismail/.dotfiles/.common-dotfiles % stow --target=/home/ismail/.dotfiles/test . But the following command does not work: stow --target=/home/ismail/.dotfiles/test…
Ahmad Ismail
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Path errors when using GNU Stow

I am trying to get started with GNU Stow. I have defined STOW_DIR to point to a personal path: STOW_DIR=/some/path I then build a package of my choice from the tarball and install it under STOW_DIR. In this case, I am building stow itself (i.e. I…
Amelio Vazquez-Reina
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ignore directories with stow

I am having problem in using stow correctly. The scrip I use to install all my stow's is : cd ~/Utility/configs for file in *; do # Only run Stow on the directories in the dotfiles folder and not the individual files. # Using 'basename' strips…
BaRud
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How to sync files and symbolic links between original dir and symbolic directory using GNU stow?

For instance, I put symbolic links into ~/.local/bin/ which point to real executable files in ~/Dotfiles.d/local/.local/bin/. I use the following instructions to do that: $ cd ~/Dotfiles.d/ $ stow -v local so stow will create links for all files in…
CodyChan
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