Use asdf as the recommended installer?

[eric-burel]

I've recently started to use asdf and I think it's a very interesting way to install packages:

• not restricted to JS ecosystem, contrary to Node.js NVM and Volta, Python pyvenv and so on
• same commands on all systems
• can handle versioning per project elegantly, with tracking for the whole team

The Deno plugin lives there: https://github.com/asdf-community/asdf-deno

Install looks like this:

asdf plugin-add deno https://github.com/asdf-community/asdf-deno.git
asdf install deno latest
asdf global deno latest
# asdf local deno latest # if you want to specify a specific version per project

Btw, the "edit" button on in the manual web page lead to a branch specific version on GitHub that is not really editable (https://github.com/denoland/manual/blob/v1.25.0/getting_started/installation.md, edit button says "you must be on a branch to edit"), which prevented me from opening a PR directly, I don't know if this process could be improved?

[jsejcksn]

@eric-burel I thought I remembered it being listed in the installation section of the homepage (but maybe I'm misremembering that). It's still in the readme for the deno_install repo, which is linked from that section in the home page. Is that what you meant?

[eric-burel]

You seem to have 3 pages that are not completely consistent:

• https://deno.land/[email protected]/getting_started/installation: from the getting started page, lists the "scripts" approaches + OS specific approaches but not asdf.
• https://deno.land/#installation: the website page, lists the "scripts" approaches
• https://github.com/denoland/deno_install/tree/281488a512315e31b57984d41b67decb11864816#install-and-manage-multiple-versions: the deno_install Readme, lists all

I propose to always have:

1. the asdf approach as the recommended cross-platform multi-versions approach, especially if user intend to have multiple deno projects + may also want to adopt asdf for their node projects
2. the script approaches that are turnkey
3. a list of other various package managers that can install Deno

[jsejcksn]

1. the asdf approach as the recommended cross-platform multi-versions approach

@eric-burel I love using asdf, but it's not cross-platform. It only supports unix-like operating systems, and native usage on Windows is definitely a large target for Deno.

[eric-burel]

Ah didn't know that limitation indeed. So at least it would be worth making the documentation consistent, and perhaps recommend Asdf only for unix systems + Windows for WSL for users that intend to manage multiple versions of Deno (agency, freelancers etc.). It's still a relatively good solution if it supports most system apart native Windows, for which you have other solutions.