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basic commands

last updated: Oct 20, 2023

Some notes on how I use asdf to install and manage programming language environments. I've been using it for a while now and I'm very happy with it - read their getting started page to get it installed.

Pairs well with direnv for managing project-specific environments.

List every installed env: asdf list

List installed pythons: asdf list python

List all available pythons: asdf list all python

Install a recent pypy: asdf install python pypy3.9-7.3.9

Update a plugin: asdf plugin update ruby

Update asdf itself: asdf update

Make a recent pypy the locally active pypy (writes a .tool-versions file):

$ asdf local python pypy3.9-7.3.9
$ cat .tool-versions
python pypy3.9-7.3.9

Where's pip currently coming from?

$ which pip
/Users/llimllib/.asdf/shims/pip

It's a shim inserted by asdf to run pip with the current local version.

How long does my notes generator take under pypy?

# `python` here is pypy
$ python --version
Python 3.9.12 (05fbe3aa5b0845e6c37239768aa455451aa5faba, Mar 29 2022, 09:54:47)
[PyPy 7.3.9 with GCC Apple LLVM 13.0.0 (clang-1300.0.29.30)]

$ time python run.py
unable to find link "player", "fg_pct" in pandas
unable to find link "player", "fg_pct" in pandas
Unable to find page "player", "fg_pct"
Unable to find page "player", "fg_pct"
Unable to find page Change_DistillingTree_Differencing_for_Fine-Graine.pdf
Unable to find page gumtree.pdf

real	0m8.564s
user	0m8.044s
sys	0m0.468s

And, how long does it run under python? Let's switch to python 3.10.0 and try it

$ asdf local python 3.10.0

# you can see the changes in `.tool-versions`:
$ cat .tool-versions
python 3.10.0

# and check the python version:
$ python --version
Python 3.10.0

$ time python run.py
unable to find link "player", "fg_pct" in pandas
unable to find link "player", "fg_pct" in pandas
Unable to find page "player", "fg_pct"
Unable to find page "player", "fg_pct"
Unable to find page Change_DistillingTree_Differencing_for_Fine-Graine.pdf
Unable to find page gumtree.pdf

real	0m9.430s
user	0m9.024s
sys	0m0.260s

I switched to an even older version to see if it would be slower, but the type annotations sadly aren't compatible. Computers.

A key command is asdf reshim; if you install new binaries via your programming environment's package manager (gem, pip, npm, etc), you should run asdf reshim or it may not pick up the binary you installed.

If you don't, you may see an error like this one I saw when running my notes generator:

No preset version installed for command pygmentize
Please install a version by running one of the following:

asdf install python pypy3.9-7.3.9

or add one of the following versions in your config file at /Users/llimllib/code/obshtml/.tool-versions
python 3.10.0

What happened was that I pip installed the binary pygmentize, but asdf doesn't know to insert a shim for it in this version of python until I run asdf reshim. After I did, everything worked as expected.

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