A human engineer using a computer system can maintain numerous software
services and packages installed on a number of servers through a single
master server and a computer network. Each software service and package is
represented in a package and service template datastore in a templatized
form in which server-specific information is represented by placeholder
data. To install a service or package on a destination server computer,
data specific to the destination server is substituted for the
corresponding placeholder data in program modules, configuration data
files, and installation scripts and the program modules, configuration
data files, and installation scripts are transported to the destination
server where the installation scripts are executed. To support
simultaneous installations of multiple versions of a software package, a
given software package includes a first directory which is
version-independent and additional, separate directories for each version
of the software package installed on the destination server computer.
