I find a lot of times with Elixir that I’m torn between using a library to do something and just rolling my own solution. Often times, the language of Elixir itself and the simplicity of the Phoenix framework lends itself well to just implementing your own solution rather than relying on a 3rd party solution. This is a departure from a not too distant past when working in Ruby, where it was almost a knee-jerk reaction to reach for a gem to do anything and everything. You need attachments? Use paperclip. Authorization? Use cancancan. Authentication? Use devise.
Lately, I’ve been using the asdf as a tool for managing runtime dependencies. It’s a single CLI that can be used for installing and managing the versions of various runtimes. It’s super useful when you are working on multiple projects that have different version dependencies. It’s similar to `rbenv` in Rubyland, except that its a single CLI for multiple runtimes. I use it for everything from Ruby to Elixir to Node.js to Python and even Yarn.
I’m not going to go into detail on how to install or use asdf. They have great docs. But briefly, you can use asdf…
Cameron Carlyle
Developer - Climber
