“The installation instructions in most free software reviews
aren’t enough. If you decide a package sucks, how do you get rid of
it? If a package rocks, how do you upgrade it? GNU Stow, a package
manager for packages you compile and install yourself, provides an
easy answer to both questions.“Many GNU/Linux distribution developers use Stow, so you’ll find
it in the default package repositories of every major GNU/Linux
distribution. Stow’s only dependency is Perl. If you use a
distribution that includes neither Stow nor Perl, you can use
Stow’s simple bootstrapping instructions to install both…”