asdf VS asdf-nodejs

asdf or compatible .tool-versions file

In this article, we will use a version manager called asdf‑vm, or simply asdf.

This, but here are some things I've learned to do:

* Use a .local directory under my home directory instead of ~/bin. That's a great prefix when installing from source or tarball at the user level, keeps the top-level of the home directory from getting cluttered with /share /lib /include /etc /lib etc. etc.

* Reach for the package manager first when installing new software, unless there is a good reason not to. It makes keeping things up-to-date easy, and since I use Arch, which uses a rolling release, you pretty much get the latest stuff.

* If I can't get what I want from the package manager, I'll look at what is available using asdf-vm (https://asdf-vm.com/), and failing that, build from source or install from tarball.

* I don't use snap or the like.

I gave up on Windows over 20 years ago, and I can't say enough how liberating it has been. One of the nicest things is that there is a distro for almost every need (see https://distrowatch.com/). I use Arch; but your use case may point to a beginner-friendly distro, such as Mint, Ubuntu, etc., or a repeatable install type of distro, such as NixOS or Guix, or many others.

# Download asdf git clone https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf.git ~/.asdf --branch v0.15.0 # Add the following to ~/.zshrc . "$HOME/.asdf/asdf.sh" # Optional: Completions are configured by either a ZSH Framework asdf plugin # or by adding the following to your .zshrc: fpath=(${ASDF_DIR}/completions $fpath) autoload -Uz compinit && compinit

asdf is a popular version manager that uses a technique called "shimming" to switch between different versions of tools like Python, Node.js, and Ruby. It creates temporary paths to specific versions, modifying the environment to ensure that the correct version of a tool is used in different projects. However, this method can introduce performance overhead due to how these shims work.

Manage versions with asdf → GitHub

# Add NodeJS plugin asdf plugin add nodejs https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-nodejs.git # Install desired version asdf install nodejs latest # Or specify version asdf install nodejs 22.14.0

A plugin is just a set of clever shell scripts that let asdf select the proper version of a specific command (e.g., check the Node.js plugin). The commands in the bin directory just implement what asdf must execute when you use the Node.js plugin to install a new version, select a specific version for use, etc.

asdf plugin-add nodejs https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-nodejs.git

I have used a similar tool asdf before, but the previous experience of using asdf was not very good (I don’t mean to step on it~, the ASDF ecosystem is very strong), vfox now supports a lot of plugins, and can already manage the versions of most common mainstream languages.

Not nix based, but I really like https://github.com/jdx/mise too to manage dev tools.

It’s a modern version of https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf written in Rust.

That's what I would suggest as well. WSL2 and use asdf[1] to manage the erlang/elixir versions.

[1]: https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf

echo "Installing nodejs with asdf" asdf plugin add nodejs https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-nodejs.git asdf install nodejs latest asdf global nodejs latest

However this is still a neat script OP! I was looking for something like this when installing Go for the first time and was contemplating between goenv, gvm, and asdf before settling on brew.

Have you tried this? https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-nodejs#nvmrc-and-node-versio...

Also lts, lts-hydrogen, etc are available to install I can see when running `asdf list all nodejs`