The operating system manages software entities by creating a construct called a context that organizes and manages software-related state and configuration settings of applications. A context may comprise an installation service, a configuration service and an activation service. Contexts can be linked or arranged hierarchically to form parent-child relationships. Hierarchies may be used to affect accessibility of software items, to satisfy dependencies, to control the visibility/invisibility of software items, to provide access to configuration settings and to override software availability, dependencies and configuration settings. An override may be applied to set policy when more than one context has a configuration setting, dependency or access to a software entity.