Subject: Re: [TAG] /usr/lib/rpm corrupt
From: Kapil Hari Paranjape <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 09:29:27 +0530

> There's also GNU stow, which allows you to install a package
> all together under /usr/local/ and it will make symlinks for
> /usr/local/bin/, /usr/local/lib/, /usr/local/man/, etc.  It's
> more lightweight than DPKG or RPM, but I still find it overkill
> for home-compiled applications.

"stow" is quite useful as it avoids many of the problems with direct
installations in /opt or /usr/local and the clean-up operations
thereof. Basically, you *can* create all the files related to a package
(say "ggg") in /opt/ggg or /usr/local/ggg. Then "stow" allows you to
create/manage the symlinks in /usr/local/{bin,lib,man,whatever} or
/opt/{bin,lib,man,whatever}. Thus you don't need all those changes to
PATH and LIBRARY_PATH variables.

"stow" was very useful when managing GNU software on proprietary systems
like Solaris (remember those days?) and it is interesting that it is
kind of useful in reverse as well!

> if they go into "/opt/lib" (and you tweak "/etc/ld.so.conf"), you
> still can't just blow it away - other packages' libs are in there,
> too.

with "stow" you only remove the relevant symlinks---and stow does that
"automatically".

Over here proprietary software on GNU systems and GNU software on
proprietary systems was/is succesfully handled using "stow". While
dependencies (libraries and so on) are beyond "stow" the clean addition
and removal of files is certainly very convenient.

If there wasn't an article on using stow in LG then I could quite easily
write up a 2-cent tip on how to do it.

[Later comment:]  Found a nice article: lg/issue75/peda.html

Regards,

Kapil.

From: Jason Creighton <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [TAG] /usr/lib/rpm corrupt
X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.8.6 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu)
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 12:14:32 -0700

> Hm. I'm certainly getting a side benefit out of this discussion; I
> think I'm going to start using "stow" much more than I have been.

Stow is fun. Just ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/<packagename>
make and install, then use stow to make the symlinks. (If people would
have an uninstall target in thier makefiles, things would work out
better. But they don't and it doesn't.)

Jason Creighton