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asdf-community
asdf-python
Shell2018–2026
asdf-community / asdf-python

asdf-python

Python plugin for the asdf version manager [maintainer=@danhper]

7Distinct people
8Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
731GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Python plugin for the asdf version manager [maintainer=@danhper]

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 11:56:56 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year8 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2018-10-18 12:54:39 UTC to 2026-04-30 19:05:49 UTC.

0122018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20222023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

8 sources
This week I was wondering whether using uv for managing Python versions is a good idea. From their website [1] > Python does not publish official distributable binaries. As such, uv uses distributions from the Astral python-build-standalone project. See the Python distributions documentation for more details. It points to this GitHub repo https://github.com/astral-sh/python-build-standalone which mentions this other link https://gregoryszorc.com/docs/python-build-standalone/main/r... If I understand correctly, the source code for building Python is not fetched directly from python.org. Not so sure how secure is that. I have the same concern for asdf [2]. However, they use pyenv [3] which, I think, feels more official. Can someone clarify this? Which tool is better/more secure for installing python: uv or asdf? [1] https://docs.astral.sh/u
Read the rest
In Shai-Hulud Themed Malware Found in the PyTorch Lightning AI Training Library
A lot of people like all-in-one tools, and uv offers an opinionated approach that works. It's essentially the last serious attempt at this since Poetry, except that uv is also supporting a variety of new Python packaging standards up front (most notably https://peps.python.org/pep-0621/ , which Poetry lagged on for years - see https://github.com/python-poetry/roadmap/issues/3 ) and seems committed to keeping on top of new ones. How much you can benefit depends on your use case. uv is a developer tool that also manages installations of Python itself (and maintains separate environments for which you can choose a Python version). If you're just trying to install someone else's application from PyPI - say https://pypi.org/project/pycowsay/ as an example - you'll likely have just as smooth of an experience via pipx (although installation will
Read the rest
be even slower than with pip, since it's using pip behind the scenes and adding its own steps). On the other hand, to my understanding, to use uv as a developer you'll still need to choose and install a build backend such as Flit or Hatchling, or else rely on the default Setuptools. One major reason developers are switching to uv is lockfile support. It's worth noting here that an interoperable standard for lockfiles was recently approved (https://peps.python.org/pep-0751/), uv will be moving towards it, and other tools like pip are moving towards supporting it (the current pip can write such lockfiles, and installing from them is on the roadmap: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/13334). If you, like me, prefer to follow the UNIX philosophy, a complete developer toolchain in 2025 looks like: * Python itself (if you want standalone binaries like the ones uv uses, you can get them directly; you can also build from source like I do; if you want to manage Python installations then https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv is solid, or you can use the multi-language https://asdf-vm.com/guide/introduction.html with https://github.com/asdf-community/asdf-python I guess) * Ability to create virtual environments (the standard library takes care of this; some niche uses are helped out by https://virtualenv.pypa.io/) * Package installer (Pip can handle this) and manager (if you really want something to "manage" packages by installing into an environment and simultaneously updating your pyproject.toml, or things like that; but just fixing the existing environment is completely viable, and installers already resolve dependencies for whatever it is they're currently installing) * Build frontend (the standard is https://build.pypa.io/en/stable/; for programmatic use, you can work with https://pyproject-hooks.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ directly) * Build backend (many options here - by design! but installers will assume Setuptools by default, since the standard requires them to, for backwards compatibility reasons) * Support for uploading packages to PyPI (the standard is https://twine.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) * Optional: typecheckers, linters, an IDE etc. A user on the other hand only needs * Some version of Python (the one provided with a typical Linux distribution will generally work just fine; Windows users should usually just install the current version, with the official installer, unless they know something they want to install isn't compatible) * Ability to create virtual environments and also install packages into them (https://pipx.pypa.io/stable/ takes care of both of these, as long as the package is an "application" with a defined entry point; I'm making https://github.com/zahlman/paper which will lift that restriction, for people who want to `import` code but not necessarily publish their own project) * Ability to actually run the installed code (pipx handles this by symlinking from a standard application path to a wrapper script inside the virtual environment; the wrappers specify the absolute path to the virtual environment's Python, which is generally all that's needed to "use" that virtual environment for the program. It also provides a wrapper to run Pip within a specific environment that it created. PAPER will offer something a bit more sophisticated here, for both aspects.)
In Fun with uv and PEP 723
I use asdf and its Python plugin [1] to install Python interpreter versions. For managing virtual environments on my preferred shell (Fish), I use (and maintain) VirtualFish [2]. For managing project dependencies, I activate environments via VirtualFish and then use Poetry [3] to update the dependencies within the environments. [1]: https://github.com/danhper/asdf-python [2]: http://github.com/justinmayer/virtualfish [3]: http://python-poetry.org
In Changes to Homebrew adversely affect Python development
Virtualenv lets you use only a Python interpreter that's already installed on your system. Usually the choice is between the latest v2 and v3 interpreter, at least on Debian derivatives. Every virtualenv is autoupgraded each time the OS upgrades its Pythons. If you want to use multiple versions of Python and pin them, you should use something like asdf [1] and its Python plugin [2]. It's a version manager with support for many languages and more. I used it for Elixir, Node, PHP, Ruby and even PostgreSQL (I need different database versions in different projects.) I never used it for Python because I'm OK with being on the latest version so far. With asdf I would expect to do something like this asdf install python 3.7.5 mkdir my375project cd my375project asdf local python 3.7.5 # pick the version to use here python3 -m venv py375
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--python=~/.asdf/installs/python/3.7.5/bin/python ~/.virtualenvs/py375/bin/activate This virtualenv is going to stay on 3.7.5 forever. [1] https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf [2] https://github.com/danhper/asdf-python
In OpenBSD won't update Firefox, advises users to switch to ESR

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