Long time GNU Stow user here, and have been recently working on a simpler replacement called sym. source is here and some rationale and usage can be found in the readme. It requires python 3.6+, stdlib only, and am planning on using it as a reference implementation for a rewrite in some compiled language in the future when I have more time.

Let me know what you guys think. I migrated my dotfiles installation to it like this, main benefits being:

• you can specify more than one source directory so as to invoke the tool only once, as opposed to stow multiple times
  
• a cleaner default command line invocation (e.g.
  
• source directory location can be arbitrary and not limited to 1 directory level (stow will complain about "slashes not permitted in package names")
  
• better cleanup (will remove empty dirs resulting from symlink removal)
  
• 100-ish LoC, clean and readable