oam/knowledge base/asdf.md

ASDF

CLI tool to manage multiple language runtime versions on a per-project basis. It works like gvm, nvm, rbenv and pyenv (and more) all in one.

Table of contents

1. TL;DR
2. Installation
3. Plugins management
   1. Plugins gotchas
4. Versions management
   1. The .tool-versions file
5. Further readings

TL;DR

# List installed plugins.
asdf plugin list

# List available plugins.
asdf plugin list all

# Add plugins.
asdf plugin add 'helm'

# Update plugins.
asdf plugin update 'kubectl'
asdf plugin update --all

# Remove plugins.
asdf plugin remove 'terraform'

# List installed versions.
asdf list 'elixir'

# List available versions.
asdf list all 'elixir'

# Install versions.
asdf install 'erlang' 'latest'
asdf install 'terraform' '1.1.1'

# Install all versions specified in '.tool-versions'.
asdf install

# Set specific installed versions for use.
asdf global 'helm' '3.3' '3.2'
asdf shell 'erlang' 'latest'
asdf local 'elixir' 'system'

# Uninstall versions.
asdf uninstall 'helm' '3.3'

# Show the current status.
asdf current
asdf current 'helm'

Installation

# Install the application.
brew install 'asdf'

# Load ASDF's environment and completion.
# Alternatively, just load oh-my-zsh's plugin for it.
. "$(brew --prefix 'asdf')/asdf.sh"
echo -e "source "(brew --prefix asdf)"/libexec/asdf.fish" | tee ~/'.config/fish/conf.d/asdf.fish'

Plugins management

# List installed plugins.
asdf plugin list
asdf plugin list --urls

# List all available and plugins.
asdf plugin list all

# Add plugins.
asdf plugin add 'helm'

# Update plugins.
asdf plugin update --all
asdf plugin update 'erlang'

# Remove plugins.
asdf plugin remove 'terraform'

Plugins gotchas

asdf plugin list all or asdf plugin add $PLUGIN_NAME also trigger a sync with the plugins repository.

Versions management

# List installed versions.
asdf list 'elixir'

# List all available versions of a plugin.
asdf list all 'elixir'

# Install a version.
asdf install 'erlang' 'latest'

# Check currently installed and configured versions.
asdf current
asdf current 'helm'

# Configure versions for use.
asdf global 'helm' '3.3' '3.2'
asdf shell erlang 'latest'
asdf local elixir 'latest'

# Fallback to the system-installed version.
asdf local python 'system'

# Uninstall versions.
asdf uninstall 'helm' '3.3'

The .tool-versions file

Stores the global (~/.tool-versions) or local (./.tool-versions) settings for ASDF.

# Multiple versions can be set by separating them with a space.
# plugin_name  default_version  first_fallback_version ... nth_fallback_version
python system 3.11.0 3.10.9 3.9.7

The versions listed in such file can be:

• an actual version, like 3.10.9; plugins that support downloading binaries, will download that versions' binaries
• a git reference, like ref:v1.0.2-a or ref:39cb398vb39; plugins will download the given tag/commit/branch from github and compile the executable file
• a path, like path:~/src/elixir; plugins will reference this path to a (custom, compiled) version of the executable
• the system keyword; this causes asdf to passthrough to the version of the tool present on the host system and avoid those which are managed by asdf

Further readings

• the project's homepage
• the project's github page
• plugins list
• .tool-versions example