What is STORE?

STORE is a concept for handling third-party programs under Unix.

The goal of STORE is to give administrators and users a framework that:

provides a clear view on each single application,
is transparent to users,
allows handling several versions of one program,
keeps information on local modifications,
eases cooperation and sharing of applications between several organizations with different computer usage patterns,
eases equivalent installation of programs between different hardware/software platforms, and
lets administrators choose which applications to make available on each machine, so single applications may be added and removed as needed.

To provide these features, STORE is a set of programs, supporting a central concept on how to organize software installation. The central concept is:

All files belonging to one single application should be kept together in one single directory tree.
For each collection of machines in organizations in a cooperating STORE environment, there should be one and only one such master directory for each application.
An application may need some architecture dependent files, and some independent files. In STORE, an application has several versions of architecture dependent files, and one common version of each architecture independent file.
To ensure availability and acceptable access speed, the application packages should be automatically distributed to local copies, enabling automatic propagation of changes in the original version.
A virtual directory tree with symbolic links weaves together the multitude of packages, creating a "normal" tree for the end-user and ensuring simple use of programs.