Install stow with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• chkstow
• stow

Project history

GNU's people page identifies Bob Glickstein as the author of GNU Stow. The Stow manual explains the original problem: administrators commonly built software such as Perl and Emacs under /usr/local, then needed a reliable way to upgrade or remove one package without confusing its files with another package's files.

Stow's design keeps each package in its own private tree and makes the files appear in a common tree through symbolic links. The manual says Stow was inspired by Carnegie Mellon's Depot, but deliberately avoided Depot's database state and destructive synchronization risks.

Adoption history

The Stow manual notes that more sophisticated system and language package managers reduced its role as a general software installer, naming rpm, dpkg, Nix, Guix, gem, pip, and npm as examples. It also records Stow's continued use for per-user configuration management, especially when paired with version control.

Homebrew, Debian, Fedora, Arch, Nix, MacPorts, and other package-manager entries in the supplied source facts show that Stow remains widely packaged as a small Unix tool rather than as an application platform.

How it is used

Users arrange package directories under a stow directory and run the stow CLI to create, delete, or restow symlinks into the target tree. In dotfile workflows, the target is commonly the user's home directory, and Stow's --dotfiles behavior supports package trees that avoid hidden filenames internally.

The official manual documents resource files in .stowrc and ~/.stowrc, plus package-local and global ignore files, making it convenient to encode repeated CLI options and ignore rules.

Why package nerds care

Stow matters to package-manager culture because it is a minimal, inspectable alternative to database-backed ownership tracking: the filesystem layout is the metadata. That makes it attractive for source-built /usr/local trees, home-directory dotfiles, and users who want reversible installs without a full package manager.

It also gives package nerds a classic example of Unix composition: symlinks, predictable directory structure, and version control cover most of the workflow without a daemon, registry, or lockfile format.

Timeline

• 1990s: Bob Glickstein authored GNU Stow.
• 2024-04-07: GNU Stow 2.4.0 released with dotfiles-related fixes.
• 2024-09-08: GNU Stow 2.4.1 released with additional --dotfiles and ignore-list fixes.

Related projects

• Carnegie Mellon Depot influenced Stow's problem space, but Stow's manual contrasts its stateless symlink approach with Depot's database-based synchronization.
• Modern package managers such as rpm, dpkg, Nix, Guix, pip, gem, and npm cover many software-installation cases that Stow once addressed, while Stow remains common in dotfile-manager workflows.

Sources

• https://www.gnu.org/people/people.html
• https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/
• https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/manual/stow.html
• source_facts.package-manager