Extensible version manager - ASDF - for the rescue

I have been using rvm for a long time to manage per project ruby versions (and appropriate gemsets as well). While that works really well for ruby, it doesn’t solve for other run-times. node.js for example. While I am not a front-end developer, node is a frequent dependency for building JS for Rails as well as Phoenix. Some people solve the issue with bunch of Docker containers, but that feel clumsy and slow for local development.

Fortunately, there is a project called asdf. It can replace rvm as well as nvm (node) or even virtualenv (Python) and much more – check available plugins.

Installation

Installation is very simple, just follow documentation. When done, you want to install plugins. For example:

asdf plugin-add ruby
asdf plugin-add elixir
asdf plugin-add python
asdf plugin-add erlang
asdf plugin-add golang
asdf plugin-add yarn

Updating

You can update plugins with

asdf plugin-update --all

and you can also update asdf with

asdf update

Install vm

Having plugin installed is not yet sufficient for your work. You also need to install the appropriate version of your vm you want to use. For example, you can get all available ruby versions with

asdf list-all ruby

when you pick one, you want to install, you need to invoke asdf install <plugin> <version>. For example:

asdf install ruby 2.6.5

After you have installed particular version, you can set it as your default with

asdf global ruby 2.6.5

or you can set it “per project” with

asdf local ruby 2.6.5

Commands above will write to file .tool-versions. Global variant will use fire in your home directory, while local one uses current directory. Local configuration has precedence, thus you can define different versions per project.

You can verify your current active version with

asdf current

# or for the particular plugin
asdf current ruby

Shims

Shim is used instead of binary installed by a library. This sometimes break and you need to reshim your binaries. For example

gem install middleman  # will install Middleman
asdf reshim ruby       # fixes ruby shims
which middleman        # $HOME/.asdf/shims/middleman

Legacy version files

You man want to add legacy_version_file = yes to your ~/.asdfrc as that will instruct asdf to follow classic version files. Such as .ruby-version.

Gemsets

rvm has a feature called gemset, which allows for separation of installed gems per environment. asdf doesn’t have such support (asdf#312, asdf-ruby#25). But I have found that I don’t really miss them at all as all of my projects are using Gemfile / bundler anyway.

There is a neat feature of asdf-ruby though – you can list gems, which will get installed to every Ruby version, by placing them to $HOME/.default-gems. For example:

bundler
pry

Conclusion

asdf works great so far and I am super happy with it. It significantly simplified my workflow in projects depending on multiple languages (e.g. Elixir + node).

Extensible version manager - ASDF - for the rescuervm/rbench/nvm/etc under one roof