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

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

#21

Post by wongarsu »

happyweasel wrote: post #16

Can someone please explain to me what this does? I have 25y exp in the industry but I did not Understand the use cases by reading the GitHub page..

Suppose you have one project that only works with the newest Node 20, and another only works with Node versions 16-18. So you want a tool that takes care of installing both versions and gives you an easy way to switch between them, either globally or only for the current shell. Maybe with some autodetection via config files that can be put in the project folder.

That's basically this. But not bespoke for node (like nvm) or python (like pyenv) or protobuf, but as one tool that promises to do this for all your tools

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

#22

Post by rjzzleep »

aooohan wrote: post #13
magnio wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to like asdf but 1. it's slow, and 2. not available on Windows proper (non-WSL). Same with mise ( https://github.com/jdx/mise ) which builds on asdf. Volta exists but alas, it's only for JavaScript.

I've used all of these tools in conjunction with my own usage habits, which is why I'm developing vfox from scratch rather than based on asdf. so the issue at hand for vfox is the need to rebuild the plugin ecology. There's no way to utilise off-the-shelf asdf plugins.

I just looked at your plugin-template. This sounds good actually. Writing asdf plugins can be quite nasty. I like the approach of adding a lua dsl for plugin generation, not sure I like the dsl itself.

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

#23

Post by Kuinox »

I do not understand the usecase for dotnet, since the dotnet SDK self select the correct version to run the project. You never need to change the version yourself. On my current machine:

    PS C:\Users\username> dotnet --list-sdks
    7.0.408 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
    8.0.101 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
    8.0.104 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
    8.0.204 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
    8.0.300-preview.24118.4 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
IMO it's a better way to handle this sort of problem: the SDK self select which version should run, according to your project config.

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

#24

Post by lxe »

happyweasel wrote: post #16

Can someone please explain to me what this does? I have 25y exp in the industry but I did not Understand the use cases by reading the GitHub page..

Curious what your experience is. I'm guessing there are dev cultures where tooling versions never have to change across projects, which has its pros and cons.

For most of my career at large tech orgs working with node.js/frontend stack, python, go, and even java, I always needed things like conda, nvm, etc...

Heck, even working with C (and CUDA), I would love to have an easy way to switch system-wide C/CXX compiler versions.

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

#26

Post by AaronFriel »

Kuinox wrote: post #23

I do not understand the usecase for dotnet, since the dotnet SDK self select the correct version to run the project. You never need to change the version yourself. On my current machine: PS C:\Users\username> dotnet --list-sdks 7.0.408 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.101 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.104 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.204 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.300-preview.24118.4 [C:\Program File…

For runtimes with tooling like .NET has, it's a niche use case.

At $dayjob, we have to support non-current compilers/SDKs for five different languages and runtimes where our tool will invoke (shell out, often) the CLIs for those tools. When triaging a bug report, it's great to have a version manager to use exactly the customer's version of the CLI.

Likewise, we need to make sure all of our examples and templates build even if the user has an old version, and the surest way to validate that is to hide newer CLIs and tools, and to test on the range of binaries that a customer could have installed.

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

#27

Post by vbezhenar »

WorldMaker wrote: post #20
happyweasel wrote: post #16

Can someone please explain to me what this does? I have 25y exp in the industry but I did not Understand the use cases by reading the GitHub page..

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.

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

#29

Post by [deleted] »

Kuinox wrote: post #23

I do not understand the usecase for dotnet, since the dotnet SDK self select the correct version to run the project. You never need to change the version yourself. On my current machine: PS C:\Users\username> dotnet --list-sdks 7.0.408 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.101 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.104 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.204 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.300-preview.24118.4 [C:\Program File…

[deleted]

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

#30

Post by [deleted] »

Kuinox wrote: post #23

I do not understand the usecase for dotnet, since the dotnet SDK self select the correct version to run the project. You never need to change the version yourself. On my current machine: PS C:\Users\username> dotnet --list-sdks 7.0.408 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.101 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.104 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.204 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk] 8.0.300-preview.24118.4 [C:\Program File…

[deleted]
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