Why I use aqua

aqua is a declarative CLI Version Manager written in Go.

https://aquaproj.github.io/

In this post, I describe why I use aqua.

Why I use aqua

• Align tool versions in team and CI
  • Solve the problem due to the difference of tool versions
• Manage tools and their versions for projects as code declaratively, and provide an unified way to install tools
  • aqua supports changing tool versions per project
• Stop developing shell scripts and GitHub Actions to install tools per tool and per project
• Update tools with Renovate easily
• Install tools hosted in private repositories

Why not asdf?

asdf is used for the similar purpose, but I use aqua. Why?

• Some tools don't have asdf plugins for them
• Good Experience
  • You don't have to install plugins
  • Tools are installed automatically
  • Search tools by aqua g is useful
• aqua doesn't force to use aqua in other projects and globally
• Easy to support new tools
  • It is easier to contribute to aqua-registry than to develop asdf plugin
• Easy to introduce aqua to teams and projects because aqua is easy and doesn't force to use aqua in other projects and globally
• Easy to update tools with Renovate
• aqua supports splitting configuration files, so it is easy to filter builds in CI by changed file paths

About the difference between aqua and asf, please see Comparison - asdf too.