[CLUE-Cert] package manager

David Anselmi anselmi at americanisp.net
Fri Apr 11 09:41:18 MDT 2003


Dennis J Perkins wrote:
> Jef, this might be worth investigating as an alternative to RPMs.  I haven't
> had a chance to read the manual yet.
> 
> http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-stow/?ca=dgr-lnxw01STOW

Looks to me that this is not a replacement for RPMs or apt.  It may be a 
useful compliment to manage packages you install from source (which are 
truly a pain if you don't do something to manage them).

To use stow, you build from source with a prefix set to 
/usr/local/stow/<app> or something.  Then you can use stow to link all 
the right files from <app> to /usr/local/bin or wherever they belong. 
All stow does is manage the symlinks, the packages files are in <app> 
and since it is obvious that they all belong to the same package they 
can be managed by hand.

The docs don't say what happens if a package puts files in /etc.  I 
guess there is another make option for those files.  Something to watch 
out for.

I'm sure some would say that the "right" way to manage source packages 
is to make your own rpm or deb for them.  I think that's a better choice 
if you're installing on more than one machine.  Making your own debs 
seems pretty easy if you have a previous version to start from.

Dave




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