Switching between multiple versions of various tools

Artur Bartosik
2 min readDec 18, 2022

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I'm sure you've worked on different projects that used different versions of tools despite having the same technology stack. Whether you work as a frontend dev, backend dev, or DevOps, this problem can happen anywhere. Switching between versions of various tools can be tricky and painful. In this article, I decided to put together tools that will help reduce this pain.

I googled how to do it whenever I needed to switch between versions. This article I’ll treat as a private cheat sheet. If you use the following tools on a daily basis, I encourage you to save this post and treat it as I do.

Switching Terraform version - tfenv

Installation

# Mac OS
brew install tfenv

Basic commands

# list all installed terraform versions
tfenv list

# list all available terraform versions for installation
tfenv list-remote

# install selected terraform version
tfenv install 1.3.6

# switch to installed terraform version
tfenv use 1.3.6

# print currently set terraform version
tfenv version-name

# uninstall selected terraform version
tfenv uninstall 1.0.11

Switching Java, Maven, and Gradle version - sdkman

Installation

curl -s https://get.sdkman.io | bash

Basic commands

# list all installed and installable versions
sdk list java
sdk list maven
sdk list gradle

# install selected version
sdk install java 17.0.5-zulu
sdk install maven 3.8.6
sdk install gradle 7.6

# switch to installed version
sdk use java 17.0.5-zulu
sdk use maven 3.8.6
sdk use gradle 7.6

# print currently set version
sdk current java
sdk current maven
sdk current gradle

# uninstall selected version
sdk uninstall java 8.0.352-zulu
sdk uninstall maven 3.6.0
sdk uninstall gradle 7.4

# list all tools whose versions sdkman can manage
sdk list

Switching Node & npm version - nvm

Installation

# Mac OS
brew install nvm
mkdir ~/.nvm

# support for Oh My ZSH
echo "export NVM_DIR=~/.nvm\nsource \$(brew --prefix nvm)/nvm.sh" >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

Basic commands

# list all installed node versions
nvm ls

# list all available node versions for installation
nvm ls-remote

# install selected node version and switch to them
nvm install v19.2.0

# install latest LTS node version
nvm install --lts

# switch to installed node version
nvm use v19.2.0

# print currently set node version
nvm current

# uninstall selected node version
nvm uninstall v10.15.3

I will expand this article when I discover other tools of this type. If you use any other version management tools, please let me know in the comment, I'd be happy to take a look.

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Artur Bartosik

DevOps & Serverless Enthusiast. AWS, GCP, and K8S certified. Home page: https://abartosik.dev