til/unix/interactively-switch-asdf-package-versions.md

Interactively Switch asdf Package Versions

I use asdf to manage versions for a couple different languages that I use across projects. I mostly use it for node and ruby.

When setting up a new project or needing to set the version for an existing one, I run some version of:

$ asdf local nodejs <some-version-here>

But before I can do that, I need to figure out what versions I have installed (asdf list nodejs), so I end up running two commands and having to remember the nuances of the sub-commands for each.

I decided to make this small interaction easier by making it interactive with fzf.

asdf local nodejs $(
  asdf list nodejs | fzf | xargs | sed 's/^\*//'
)

This grabs the list of installed nodejs versions, turns it into an interactive list with fzf, and then passes my selection to asdf local to set that version.

I can substitute ruby for nodejs to do the same thing for Ruby versions.