Best way to update CVS install?

[Peder]

 If you are using the excellent 'stow' (available at your favourite
 GNU mirror, like ftp.sunet.se/pub/gnu/stow) you configure all
 your programs with --prefix=/opt/<program-name-and-version>.

 That gives you all your compiled programs in /opt. Then you run
 'stow -d /opt -t /usr/local <program-name-and-version>' which
 makes symbolic links in /usr/local of everything found in
 /opt/<program-name-and-version>.

 To uninstall a program you simply
 'stow -D -d /opt -t /usr/local <program-name-and-version>' to remove
 the links and 'rm -r /opt/<program-name-and-version>' to remove the
 files.

 No more unknown files that you don't dare removing lurking around in
 /usr/local.

 I just don't get why Debian's the only distro AFAIK that installs
 stow by default.

 Regards,

 Peder