XStow (like 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).

The extended features include: creation of symlinks with absolute path names, traversal link support (create a link from /usr/share/man to /usr/man), multiple stow directories support, shell pattern matching, regular expressions support, and global settings via configuration files.