Every user on a UNIX system has a home directory. The question is, where do we put a package user's home directory, and what do we do with it ?

Urpkg deals with this problem the following way. A root package directory is created (by default /usr/local/urpkg) where each package has its home directory, named like the package name. For example, the package “emacs-22.1” would have a home directory at /usr/local/urpkg/emacs-22.1. Users can put anything they want in the home directory. It is typically used for putting the program's source.

Urpkg stores some metadata concerning the package (for the moment only the files that belong to the package but whose owner or group have not been changed) in a subdirectory .urpkg of the package's home directory. This directory should not be modified by the human user.

It is possible to give another package directory root when installing the package, using the --pkg-dir option.