Willy Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >"Colin" == Colin Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> Sven Burgener <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
