GNU Stow

stow

A symlink farm manager which takes distinct packages of software located in separate directories and makes them appear installed in one place.

Runs as stow|macOS, Linux, Windows|www.gnu.org

Open form in Otty otty.toml

Sync rules

What travels, what stays, what never leaves

GNU Stow in your home directory Every rule on this page, by file

· ~/.stowrc Sync

· ~/.stow-global-ignore Sync

Only what the catalog names. A directory that syncs brings everything inside it except what is listed as excluded here.

apps/stow/otty.tomlThe file this page is generated from

id = "stow"

name = "GNU Stow"

homepage = "https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/"

description = "A symlink farm manager which takes distinct packages of software located in separate directories and makes them appear installed in one place."

executables = ["stow"]

[dotfiles]

# https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/manual/stow.html — the "Resource Files"

# section: "Default command line options may be set in .stowrc (current

# directory) or ~/.stowrc (home directory). These are parsed in that order,

# and are appended together if they both exist." The "Ignore Lists" section:

# "In the absence of this package-specific ignore list, Stow will instead use

# the contents of ~/.stow-global-ignore, if it exists." The .stowrc and

# .stow-local-ignore in a package directory belong to that package, not to

# the user, so they are not here.

paths = [

"~/.stowrc",

"~/.stow-global-ignore",

]

exclude = []

# Stow has no credentials: it only ever creates and removes symlinks.

secret = []

# Both files are read once while stow parses its options, and stow exits; no

# resident process holds either of them.

side_effect = false

# No machine_lines. The obvious candidates in .stowrc are --dir and --target,

# but the same manual section documents that "the value of an option may

# contain a shell variable or ~" and that both are expanded, so the spelling

# users are told to write (--target=~/) is portable on purpose. The global

# ignore list is a set of regular expressions and is machine-independent by

# construction.

[commands]

format = 1

label = "Stow packages"

description = "Symlink, unstow or restow packages from a stow directory. Version and help flags are left out."

quality = "ai-draft"

base = "fig:stow"

parser = { end_of_options = "--", interleave = "permute", long_equals = true, short_attached = true, short_bundles = true }

[[commands.source]]

id = "fig"

kind = "completion"

url = "https://github.com/withfig/autocomplete/blob/master/src/stow.ts"

license = "MIT"

[[commands.field]]

id = "packages"

label = "Packages"

description = "Package directories inside the stow directory."

type = "string"

position = 0

multiple = true

sources = ["fig"]

[[commands.field]]

id = "dir"

label = "Stow directory"

description = "Defaults to the current directory."

type = "path"

option = ["--dir", "-d"]

path = { kind = "directory", role = "input", must_exist = true }

sources = ["fig"]

[[commands.field]]

id = "target"

label = "Target directory"

description = "Defaults to the parent of the stow directory."

type = "path"

option = ["--target", "-t"]

path = { kind = "directory", role = "output", must_exist = true }

sources = ["fig"]

[[commands.field]]

id = "simulate"

label = "Dry run"

description = "Show what would happen without changing the filesystem."

type = "boolean"

option = ["--no", "-n"]

sources = ["fig"]

[[commands.field]]

id = "delete"

label = "Unstow"

description = "Remove the packages from the target directory."

type = "boolean"

option = ["--delete", "-D"]

sources = ["fig"]

[[commands.field]]

id = "restow"

label = "Restow"

description = "Unstow then stow again, pruning obsolete links."

type = "boolean"

option = ["--restow", "-R"]

sources = ["fig"]

[[commands.field]]

id = "dotfiles"

label = "Dotfiles"

description = "Rename dot-prefixed entries in packages to hidden files."

type = "boolean"

option = ["--dotfiles"]

sources = ["fig"]

[[commands.field]]

id = "no_folding"

label = "No folding"

type = "boolean"

option = ["--no-folding"]

sources = ["fig"]

[[commands.field]]

id = "adopt"

label = "Adopt existing files"

description = "Moves existing target files into the stow directory."

type = "boolean"

option = ["--adopt"]

effect = "overwrite"

sources = ["fig"]

[[commands.field]]

id = "ignore"

label = "Ignore pattern"

description = "Perl regex of file name endings to ignore."

type = "string"

option = ["--ignore"]

multiple = true

sources = ["fig"]

[[commands.field]]

id = "verbose"

label = "Verbosity"

description = "0 to 5."

type = "integer"

option = ["--verbose"]

value_style = "equals"

sources = ["fig"]

[[commands.task]]

id = "stow"

label = "Stow packages"

fields = ["packages", "dir", "target", "simulate", "dotfiles"]

required = ["packages"]

[[commands.task]]

id = "unstow"

label = "Unstow packages"

set = { delete = [true] }

lock = ["delete"]

fields = ["packages", "dir", "target", "simulate", "delete"]

required = ["packages"]

[[commands.task]]

id = "restow"

label = "Restow packages"

set = { restow = [true] }

lock = ["restow"]

fields = ["packages", "dir", "target", "simulate", "restow", "dotfiles"]

required = ["packages"]

[[commands.group]]

id = "basic"

label = "Basic"

fields = ["packages", "dir", "target", "simulate", "delete", "restow", "dotfiles"]

[[commands.group]]

id = "advanced"

label = "Advanced"

fields = ["no_folding", "adopt", "ignore", "verbose"]

Use it with your dotfile manager

Same data, in the shape your tool already reads

Opens Otty and adds this tool to what it syncs

Opens otty://sync/add/stow. Otty ships with this catalog, so the link only has to name the tool — nothing is downloaded.

Every one of these is generated from the same rules as this page.