asdf¶

ID: asdf
Links: Home page · Documentation · Repository
Upstream stars: ⭐ 25,588
Last commit: 2026-09-22
Version requirement: >= 0.16
Platforms: 🐧 Linux · 🍎 macOS
Operations: installed · outdated · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync
purl types: pkg:asdf/
CLI name: asdf
Issues and PRs: 📦 manager: asdf-based
Source: asdf.py

asdf manages parallel versions of multiple developer tools (Node.js, Ruby, Python, Erlang, …) through a plugin ecosystem, exposing all of them behind a single CLI.

mpm targets the 0.16.0 Go rewrite and later: it calls the space-separated subcommands (asdf list all, asdf plugin add) that replaced the hyphenated forms (list-all, plugin-add) of the older Bash asdf, which is unsupported.

What `mpm` adds to `asdf`¶

Through mpm, asdf gains:

a one-command upgrade --all that refreshes every outdated package in a single run
--exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover asdf alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your `asdf` commands, in `mpm`¶

You already know asdf: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With `asdf`	With `mpm`
List what’s installed	`asdf list`	`mpm --asdf installed`
List outdated packages	`asdf latest --all`	`mpm --asdf outdated`
Search for a package	`asdf plugin list all`	`mpm --asdf search all`
Install a package	`asdf install nodejs 20.10.0`	`mpm install pkg:asdf/nodejs`
Upgrade one package	`asdf install nodejs latest`	`mpm --asdf upgrade latest`
Upgrade everything	—	`mpm --asdf upgrade --all`
Remove a package	`asdf plugin remove nodejs`	`mpm remove pkg:asdf/nodejs`

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations¶

Operation	Supported	Notes
`installed`	✅	A tool installed at several versions yields one entry per version, all sharing the same ID.
`outdated`	✅	Only tools with a currently-active version different from their latest stable release are reported.
`orphans`
`search`	✅	Exact and extended search backfilled by `mpm`.
`install`	✅	Every tool is gated behind a plugin that must be registered with `asdf plugin add` first.
`upgrade`	✅
`upgrade_all`	✅	No native `upgrade --all`; backfilled by `mpm`.
`remove`	✅
`sync`	✅
`cleanup`
`doctor`

Configuration¶

Ignore asdf on the mpm CLI by passing the --no-asdf option.
Ignore it for every run in your configuration:
```
[mpm]
asdf = false
```
Raise the timeout of all asdf calls:
```
[mpm.overrides.asdf]
timeout = 900
```

Run mpm config-template asdf to print all overridable settings for your configuration file:

[mpm.overrides.asdf]
cli_names = [
    "asdf",
]
cli_search_path = []
dry_run = false
ignore_auto_updates = true
plan = false
post_args = []
pre_args = []
pre_cmds = []
requirement = ">=0.16.0"
stop_on_error = false
unmaintained = false
version_cli_options = [
    "version",
]
version_regexes = [
    "v?(?P<version>\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+)",
]

Recipes¶

A few jobs you would otherwise script around asdf, one mpm command each:

Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --asdf dump asdf.toml, then mpm restore asdf.toml on the next one.
Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --asdf sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation¶

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

None of its operations is privileged.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown¶

State of asdf’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None (runtime version manager)

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

Registry: GitHub release assets
Retraction: None: withdrawing a build is the upstream author deleting their own release or tag. Nothing sits between them and the user
Publish date: ✅ server-set published_at on each release (REST API)

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --cooldown best-effort opts back in.

Reference traces¶

A collection of raw native outputs captured from the manager’s own CLI and recorded in the manager source. If you know asdf well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ asdf list
nodejs
  18.20.4
 *20.10.0
ruby
 *3.2.0

$ asdf latest --all
nodejs    20.10.0    missing
ruby      3.3.0      missing

Version check¶

The version is probed by running:

$ asdf version
v0.19.0-83adfe6

and extracted with:

r"v?(?P<version>\d+\.\d+\.\d+)"

Upstream project¶

Metrics	`asdf-vm/asdf`
Activity
Popularity
Metadata

Changelog¶

6.6.0 (2026-06-17)
- Add asdf package manager (installed, outdated, search, install, upgrade, upgrade_all, remove, sync) on Linux and macOS; requires asdf >=0.16.0.