kit [USENET; poss. fr. DEC slang for a full software distribution, as opposed to a patch or upgrade] n. A source software distribution that has been packaged in such a way that it can (theoretically) be unpacked and installed according to a series of steps using only standard UNIX tools, and entirely documented by some reasonable chain of references from the top-level {READMEfile} . The more general term distribution may imply that special tools or more stringent conditions on the host environment are required.