sdkman/sdkman-cli

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

6834 stars · 644 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

SDKMAN! is a command-line tool for managing parallel versions of multiple Software Development Kits (primarily JVM-related like Java, Kotlin, Groovy, Gradle, Maven) on Unix-based systems. It lets developers install, switch, list, and remove SDK versions from the terminal without manually managing downloads or PATH variables.

Use cases

• install and switch between multiple Java versions
• manage parallel versions of JVM SDKs like Kotlin, Scala, and Groovy
• set per-project SDK versions automatically
• list and install build tools like Gradle, Maven, and SBT
• avoid manually editing PATH and HOME environment variables
• manage development toolchains on Linux, macOS, or WSL

When to choose

• you work with JVM ecosystems and need multiple SDK versions side by side
• you want a lightweight, curl-installable manager that only needs bash, curl, zip, and unzip
• you need per-project or per-shell SDK version switching similar to RVM or rbenv
• you develop on Unix-based systems including macOS, Linux, or WSL

When to avoid

• you need native Windows support outside WSL or Git Bash
• you want a general-purpose package manager for non-SDK system software
• you need new CLI features - development has moved to the Rust-based sdkman-cli-native successor
• you rely on Cygwin, which is no longer supported

Facets

cli-tool · maturity maintenance

cli package-manager developer-tools configuration-management developer-tools version-control cli cross-platform sdk-manager jvm version-switching bash rust-rewrite wsl command-line automation linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="sdkman/sdkman-cli")