I've been using GNU stow, and lately xstow to manage package installation on my myriad linux systems:

• I like the idea of being able to find out what a package a file comes from simply by doing a ls -l on it.
• I like only having to look in one place for libraries, and binaries, includes and man pages.
• I like having a sane $PATH.
• I like a packaging system to use the filesystem to store information about packages.
• I like to be able to fix the system with ln when I mangle it.
• I also don't have the guts to go to a full on djb style directory layout.

Today I got fed up. GNU stow is nice, but it depends on perl. xstow is nice, because it can be made into a static binary, but it seems a wee bit bloatish. I can't seem to get either one to support multiple stow directories for a single target directory, so directory splitting doesn't work properly. So, I'm going to write my own:

• It will be in bash.
• It will not be guaranteed to be stow compatible.
• It will support n:1 source to target mappings.