`asdf` to manage multiple versions of Zig, including custom dev versions

(originally posted here: https://zig.news/liyu1981/asdf-to-manage-multiple-versions-of-zig-including-custom-dev-versions-47bi)

asdf is a good general tool version management tool. Just like virtualenv for python, or rvm for Ruby, or nvm for nodejs. It supports plugins so it can be used as a one tool to rule all languages thing. So I was attempted to use it to manage my local zig version.

Then I found asdf-zig from asdf-community/asdf-zig, and it works, and works great! Until that I found as zig envolves fast, seems every important project is using their own specific dev version like 0.12.0-dev.2139+e025ad7b4 or 0.12.0-dev.1828+225fe6ddb, they are unfortunately not supported by asdf-zig.

But I do want to use this tool for managing my local zig versions, so again, seems the code of asdf-zig is simple enough, so I forked and created my own flavor, where I put it at https://github.com/liyu1981/asdf-zig.

Simply to say, it allows to create a custom version file at ~/.asdf/custom/zig/versions.json like below

{
  "0.12.0-dev.2139+e025ad7b4": {},
  "0.12.0-dev.1828+225fe6ddb": {},
}

then normal asdf list-all zig can show these versions and asdf install zig 0.12.0-dev.2139+e025ad7b4 can install it and then use it as it supports natively.

Following pictures shows how it is used

{% embed https://github.com/liyu1981/asdf-zig %}

Update:

added the ability to use zig master version as @justinryanh commented.