ASDF Version Manager Plugins

Installing and managing the latest version of a command line tool can be a pain and very time consuming.

As developers we typically want to use the latest and greatest version of a tool before it becomes more widely available via official deployment channels, such as deb or snap on Linux and homebrew on Mac.

Luckily, there is a simple version manager, asdf, which makes life very easy with it’s plugin capabilities.

There are many plugins provided by the community, including for:

• DotNet Core
• Crystal
• GitHub CLI
• Helm
• kubectx
• …

And, creating plugins is easy. You need 3 shell scripts, namely:

• bin/list-all - lists all installable versions
• bin/download - download source code or binary for the specified version
• bin/install - installs the specified version

See the official documentation for more details.

I spend a fair amount of time doing technical research, so often times there isn’t a distribution of the command line tool I’m testing out, so I usually resort to spending 10 to 15 minutes whipping up an asdf plugin for the given tool.

This involves creating a new repository on GitHub, from the asdf-plugin-template and then editing the lib/utils.bash file, providing the plugin name and GitHub repo URL of the tool in question.

Here are some of the plugins I’ve created:

• asdf-aws-vault - AWS Vault is a tool to securely store and access AWS credentials in a development environment.
• asdf-devspace - DevSpace is the next-generation tool for fast cloud-native software development.
• asdf-docker-compose - Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container Docker applications.
• asdf-docker-machine - Machine lets you create Docker hosts on your computer, on cloud providers, and inside your own data center.
• asdf-glooctl - Gloo is a feature-rich, Kubernetes-native ingress controller, and next-generation API gateway.
• asdf-grv - GRV is a terminal interface for viewing git repositories.
• asdf-helm - Helm is the best way to find, share, and use software built for Kubernetes.
• asdf-istioctl - Istio configuration command line utility for service operators to debug and diagnose their Istio mesh.
• asdf-k9s - Kubernetes CLI to manage your clusters in style.
• asdf-kubebuilder - SDK for building Kubernetes APIs using CRDs.
• asdf-kubectx - Faster way to switch between clusters and namespaces in kubectl.
• asdf-skaffold - For easy and repeatable Kubernetes development.
• asdf-sonarscanner - SonarScanner is the scanner to use when there is no specific scanner for your build system.
• asdf-tilt - A multi-service dev environment for teams on Kubernetes.