asdf/docs/creating-plugins.md

Creating plugins

A plugin is a git repo, with a couple executable scripts, to support versioning another language or tool. These scripts are run when list-all, install or uninstall commands are run. You can set or unset env vars and do anything required to setup the environment for the tool.

Required scripts

• bin/list-all - lists all installable versions
• bin/install - installs the specified version

All scripts except bin/list-all will have access to the following env vars to act upon:

• ASDF_INSTALL_TYPE - version or ref
• ASDF_INSTALL_VERSION - if ASDF_INSTALL_TYPE is version then this will be the version number. Else it will be the git ref that is passed. Might point to a tag/commit/branch on the repo.
• ASDF_INSTALL_PATH - the dir where the it has been installed (or should be installed in case of the bin/install script)

bin/list-all

Must print a string with a space-seperated list of versions. Example output would be the following:

1.0.1 1.0.2 1.3.0 1.4

Note that the newest version should be listed last so it appears closer to the user's prompt. This is helpful since the list-all command prints each version on it's own line. If there are many versions it's possible the early versions will be off screen.

If versions are being pulled from releases page on a website it's recommended to not sort the versions if at all possible. Often the versions are already in the correct order or, in reverse order, in which case something like tac should suffice.

bin/install

This script should install the version, in the path mentioned in ASDF_INSTALL_PATH

Optional scripts

bin/list-bin-paths

List executables for the specified version of the tool. Must print a string with a space-seperated list of dir paths that contain executables. The paths must be relative to the install path passed. Example output would be:

bin tools veggies

This will instruct asdf to create shims for the files in <install-path>/bin, <install-path>/tools and <install-path>/veggies

If this script is not specified, asdf will look for the bin dir in an installation and create shims for those.

bin/exec-env

Setup the env to run the binaries in the package.

bin/uninstall

Uninstalls a specific version of a tool.

bin/list-legacy-filenames

Register additional setter files for this plugin. Must print a string with a space-seperated list of filenames.

.ruby-version .rvmrc

Note: This will only apply for users who have enabled the legacy_version_file option in their ~/.asdfrc.

bin/parse-legacy-file

This can be used to further parse the legacy file found by asdf. If parse-legacy-file isn't implemented, asdf will simply cat the file to determine the version. The script will be passed the file path as its first argument.

Custom shim templates

PLEASE use this feature only if absolutely required

asdf allows custom shim templates. For an executable called foo, if there's a shims/foo file in the plugin, then asdf will copy that file instead of using it's standard shim template.

This must be used wisely. For now AFAIK, it's only being used in the Elixir plugin, because an executable is also read as an Elixir file apart from just being an executable. Which makes it not possible to use the standard bash shim.

**Important: Shim metadata **

If you create a custom shim, be sure to include a comment like the following (replacing your plugin name) in it:

# asdf-plugin: plugin_name

asdf uses this asdf-plugin metadata to remove unused shims when uninstalling.

Testing plugins

asdf contains the plugin-test command to test your plugin. You can use it as follows

asdf plugin-test <plugin-name> <plugin-url> [test-command]

The two first arguments are required. A command can also be passed to check it runs correctly. For example to test the NodeJS plugin, we could run

asdf plugin-test nodejs https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-nodejs.git 'node --version'

We strongly recommend you test your plugin on TravisCI, to make sure it works on both Linux and OSX.

Here is a sample .travis.yml file, customize it to your needs

language: c
script: asdf plugin-test nodejs https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-nodejs.git 'node --version'
before_script:
  - git clone https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf.git asdf
  - . asdf/asdf.sh
os:
  - linux
  - osx