A Personal Approach to Unix Package Management
2025-04-13
The author shares a clever method for managing personal software packages on Unix systems. They use a `~/lib/` directory tree to store software for different architectures, with each program installed in a separate, versioned subdirectory (e.g., `emacs-30.1`). A `~/bin/bin.` directory contains symbolic links or wrapper scripts pointing to these programs, allowing easy switching between versions. For tools like pipx and Cargo, the author keeps their default installation locations but creates links in `~/bin/bin.` to avoid path conflicts. This setup isn't perfect, but it's very useful for managing software unavailable through the system's package manager or that is too old.
Development
software management