<html lang="en"> <head> <title>Multiple Stow Directories - Stow</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html"> <meta name="description" content="Stow"> <meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.13"> <link title="Top" rel="start" href="index.html#Top"> <link rel="prev" href="Mixing-Operations.html#Mixing-Operations" title="Mixing Operations"> <link rel="next" href="Target-Maintenance.html#Target-Maintenance" title="Target Maintenance"> <link href="http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/" rel="generator-home" title="Texinfo Homepage"> <!-- This manual describes GNU Stow version 2.2.2 (9 November 2015), a program for managing the installation of software packages. Software and documentation is copyrighted by the following: (C) 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 Bob Glickstein <bobg+stow@zanshin.com> (C) 2000, 2001 Guillaume Morin <gmorin@gnu.org> (C) 2007 Kahlil (Kal) Hodgson <kahlil@internode.on.net> (C) 2011 Adam Spiers <stow@adamspiers.org> Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that the section entitled ``GNU General Public License'' is included with the modified manual, and provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the Free Software Foundation. --> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <style type="text/css"><!-- pre.display { font-family:inherit } pre.format { font-family:inherit } pre.smalldisplay { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } pre.smallformat { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } pre.smallexample { font-size:smaller } pre.smalllisp { font-size:smaller } span.sc { font-variant:small-caps } span.roman { font-family:serif; font-weight:normal; } span.sansserif { font-family:sans-serif; font-weight:normal; } --></style> </head> <body> <div class="node"> <a name="Multiple-Stow-Directories"></a> <p> Next: <a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="Target-Maintenance.html#Target-Maintenance">Target Maintenance</a>, Previous: <a rel="previous" accesskey="p" href="Mixing-Operations.html#Mixing-Operations">Mixing Operations</a>, Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="index.html#Top">Top</a> <hr> </div> <h2 class="chapter">9 Multiple Stow Directories</h2> <p>If there are two or more system administrators who wish to maintain software separately, or if there is any other reason to want two or more stow directories, it can be done by creating a file named <samp><span class="file">.stow</span></samp> in each stow directory. The presence of <samp><span class="file">/usr/local/foo/.stow</span></samp> informs Stow that, though <samp><span class="file">foo</span></samp> is not the current stow directory, even if it is a subdirectory of the target directory, nevertheless it is <em>a</em> stow directory and as such Stow doesn't “own” anything in it (see <a href="Installing-Packages.html#Installing-Packages">Installing Packages</a>). This will protect the contents of <samp><span class="file">foo</span></samp> from a ‘<samp><span class="samp">stow -D</span></samp>’, for instance. <!-- There is a test for the following case in t/examples.t: --> <p>When multiple stow directories share a target tree, if a tree-folding symlink is encountered and needs to be split open during an installation, as long as the top-level stow directory into which the existing symlink points contains <samp><span class="file">.stow</span></samp>, Stow knows how to split open the tree in the correct manner. <!-- =========================================================================== --> </body></html>