Tips for using Stow tools to manage software packages under Linux

This article is about Stow, a software Installation management utility for Linux, which is superior in many places to the "time-tested" Red Hat and Debian package management system. By using Stow, you can package your application into a standard tar file and logically arrange application binaries for easy access.

Stow is written in Perl and is easy to install and use, but it works well for organizing and managing various software installations on Linux machines. Stow can conveniently schedule different packages in a well-organized directory tree structure. This not only helps to separate files belonging to special packages from other files, but also gives users the freedom to store or install packages at any desired location, while making the software appear to be installed in a package or OS-required location.

Note: If you have intermediate knowledge of Linux and have installed Linux applications, this will help you understand this article. In this article, we use the Stow V1.3.3 and the Perl V5.005.

Software Installation management for Linux

Before we begin to understand Stow, let's look at software Installation management, which is also known as package management. Software Installation Management generally describes the activities of installing, uninstalling, updating, and organizing software applications (or packages) on the system. In these activities, organizing the application is a particularly important activity. If your application is organized, it becomes easier and more convenient to install, upgrade, and uninstall applications on a Linux machine.

On Linux systems, most applications must be installed in a particular directory (usually/usr/local/) to run and function correctly, and this requirement comes from Linux or the application itself. This does not cause any serious problems if only a few applications are installed on the Linux system and their respective files can be easily differentiated from each other.

However, in a real-world scenario, there may be a large number of applications installed in the same directory, and the directory will soon become cluttered. Imagine that when you install an application, it means to overwrite files that belong to another application, and you have to replace the file. Or imagine, before uninstalling and deleting an application, trying to determine which files belong to the application. Alternatively, you may want to locate and remove files that your application does not need. All of these situations take a lot of effort and time, and require that the file name be kept in mind.

To overcome such problems, the Software Installation Management utility is used for Linux systems. Not only do they help organize and schedule multiple software installations, but they can also be changed as often as you want, and with no effort. Stow is one such utility for Linux.