GNU Stow is a program for managing the installation of software packages, keeping them separate (/usr/local/stow/emacs vs. /usr/local/stow/perl, for example) while making them appear to be installed in the same place (/usr/local). Stow is a Perl script which should run correctly under Perl 5.005 and above. You must install Perl before running Stow. Stow was inspired by Carnegie Mellon's Depot program, but is substantially simpler.