asdf

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

25548 stars · 940 forks observed · 2026-08-28

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

asdf is an extendable CLI version manager that manages multiple language runtime versions (Ruby, Node.js, Elixir, Erlang, Go, Python, and more) through a plugin system. It uses a single .tool-versions file per project and automatically switches runtime versions as you change directories.

Use cases

• manage multiple runtime versions with one cli tool
• replace nvm rbenv pyenv with a single version manager
• pin per-project tool versions in a shared config file
• automatically switch language versions when entering a project directory
• add support for new languages via plugins
• install tool versions in ci/cd from a .tool-versions file

When to choose

• you work across multiple languages and want one consistent version manager
• you want a single per-project config file instead of .nvmrc/.ruby-version/.node-version scattered around
• you need shell auto-switching of runtime versions per directory
• you want a large plugin ecosystem covering many runtimes and tools

When to avoid

• you only use one language and prefer its native version manager (nvm, pyenv, rustup)
• you need to manage versions of tools without git available, since asdf depends on git
• you want prebuilt toolchain binaries with no compilation, as some plugins build from source

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

cli package-manager developer-tools version-control plugin-system configuration-management developer-tools programming-languages windows cli cross-platform version-manager runtime-versions tool-versions shell-integration polyglot nvm-alternative rbenv-alternative per-project-config command-line automation linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="asdf-vm/asdf")