How do you get at the bin directories? I'm assuming you just add them to your path... Stow basically starts out similarly to what you are doing now--you configure and install to ~/base/stow/xxxx (I usually use app_name-app_version for xxxx but there's no rule). Then you use stow to create a symlink tree in ~/base/{bin,lib,share,etc...}. That way the PATH (and MANPATH, INFOPATH, PERL5LIB, etc.) doesn't have to keep growing for each new app you install. I think that is a nice improvement.

Uninstalling (stow -D) runs through the symlink tree and removes anything from that package.

Thank you very much, I see the advantage now. Handling PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and the like has been the most annoying part of my setup. It is great to see that Stow can help me out!

That's basically it. I install to ~/local/stow/$pkgname , and run stow -d ~/local/stow $pkgname. Uninstalling is done with rm -rf, upgrading is done by uninstalling then installing. The only $PATH addition is ~/local/bin. A $pkgname-$version scheme might be interesting as well, if I wanted to keep older versions around.

The idea is to simulate that apps are installed in usual places (e.g. /usr/local/).