Show HN: I made a multiple runtime version manager that can be used on Windows • Hacker News Board

lxe wrote: post #25

Killer features are 1. windows support, and 2. reading .tool-versions file, meaning that you can migrate from asdf with no issues.

Yes! Compared to asdf, vfox has made some UX improvements to make the commands more concise.

Re: Show HN: I made a multiple runtime version manager that can be used on Windows

#130

Post by aooohan » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 1:01 AM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #27

WorldMaker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tool for managing environments for side-by-side installs of different versions of developer tools. Say you've got multiple projects you are working on and some need Node v18 and others Node v20 and some of each need Python 3.10 or Python 3.11 depending. You can handle switching side-by-side Node installs with a tool called nvm and there are lots for side-by-side Python switching (pyenv, pip env, conda, so many…

I just unpack node to different folders and set PATH. Why would I need any tool for that? Most languages work that way just fine. Java, node, python, go. The only bad player that I've found is Rust, its distribution is absolute mess.

> I just unpack node to different folders and set PATH. Why would I need any tool for that?

To put it simply, vfox will help you do this. Unzip node, golang, etc. to $HOME/.version-fox/cache. When you write `vfox use node@10.1.1`, it will automatically configure PATH for you. Free your hands, you don't need to think about where to download nodejs, golang, etc. runtime, nor how to configure PATH. Especially on Windows, configuring PATH is still quite troublesome.