GNU Stow

Introduction

I use GNU Stow to install locally the latest version of a handful of open source projects I care about.

I also use it to manage my dotfiles:

This page is a memo about the usage I make of the tool.

Filesystem layout

I install my packages in ~/pkg/stow/<package[-version]>.

~/pkg/bin is added to the PATH, it precedes the system binaries’ search paths.

~/.profile excerpt:

# User's Stow packages
if [ -d "$HOME/pkg/bin" ]; then
    PATH="$HOME/pkg/bin:$PATH"
fi

General cooking recommendations

The official recommendations are available in the manual:

This link also explains why it is necessary sometimes to make the package believe it is installed to ~/pkg and not ~/pkg/stow/<package>.

CMake

Generic recipe:

cmake -G Ninja -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/pkg/stow/<package> <args...>
ninja
ninja install
cd ~/pkg/stow
stow <package>

GNU Build System

Generic recipe:

configure --prefix=$HOME/pkg <args...>
make
make install prefix=$HOME/pkg/stow/<package>
cd ~/pkg/stow
stow <package>

See also

Troubleshooting

Some packages do not only add new files, but sometimes update some files.

GNU Info for example, has an index file in share/info/dir.

Emacs and mu4e conflicts on this, example:

$ stow emacs-25.1-rc2
WARNING! stowing emacs-25.1-rc2 would cause conflicts:
  * existing target is stowed to a different package: share/info/dir => ../../stow/mu/share/info/dir
All operations aborted.
$

To get rid of the issue:

$ cat <<'EOF' > .stowrc
--ignore=share/info/dir
EOF

See also

Recipes

ag

Import public key (http://geoff.greer.fm/ag/):

gpg --import ggreer_gpg_key.asc

Debian prerequisites:

sudo apt-get install automake pkg-config libpcre3-dev zlib1g-dev liblzma-dev

Recipe:

gpg --verify the_silver_searcher-0.32.0.tar.gz.asc
tar xaf the_silver_searcher-0.32.0.tar.gz
./configure --prefix=$HOME/pkg
make
make install prefix=$HOME/pkg/stow/ag-0.32.0
cd ~/pkg/stow/
stow ag-0.32.0

emacs

Download: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/download.html

I don’t think the instructions from the manual are still relevant, it seems they were written for Emacs 19.31, but it might be a good idea to check if that changed:

Get GPG key:

gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 7C207910

Recipe:

gpg --verify emacs-25.1-rc2.tar.xz.sig
unxz emacs-25.1-rc2.tar.xz
tar xaf emacs-25.1-rc2.tar
mkdir emacs-25.1-build
cd emacs-25.1-build
# install necessary dependencies (e.g: apt-get install build-dep emacs24)
# enable module support,
# xwidget (requires libwebkitgtk-3.0-dev ubuntu, webkitgtk arch)
../emacs-25.1/configure --with-modules --with-xwidgets --prefix=$HOME/pkg/
make -j9
make prefix=$HOME/pkg/stow/emacs-25.1-rc2 install
cd ~/pkg/stow
stow emacs-25.1-rc2

git

Download: https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/

Build instructions: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git#Installing-from-Source

Recipe:

gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 96AFE6CB
unxz git-2.9.2.tar.xz
gpg --verify git-2.9.2.tar.sign
tar xaf git-2.9.2.tar
cd git-2.9.2
# install necessary dependencies (zlib, ssl, ...), e.g: using apt-get build-dep git
make configure
./configure --prefix=$HOME/pkg/stow/git-2.9.2
make all doc info -j9
make install install-doc install-info
cd ~/pkg/stow
stow git-2.9.2

mu4e

Recipe:

git clone git://github.com/djcb/mu.git
env CC=clang CXX=clang++ autoreconf -i
env CC=clang CXX=clang++ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/pkg
make -j9
make install prefix=$HOME/pkg/stow/mu
cd ~/pkg/stow
stow mu

Emacs Configuration:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/pkg/share/emacs/site-lisp/mu4e")

repo

Recipe:

mkdir -p ~/pkg/stow/repo/bin
wget 'https://storage.googleapis.com/git-repo-downloads/repo' -O ~/pkg/stow/repo/bin/repo
chmod a+x ~/pkg/stow/repo/bin/repo
cd ~/pkg/stow
stow repo

sourceweb

make install prefix=<path> is not satisfied like, however it is not an issue for this program to be installed in the ~/pkg/stow/<package> directory.

Recipe:

./configure --prefix=$HOME/pkg/stow/sourceweb
make
make install
cd ~/pkg/stow
stow sourceweb