A quick look at SDKMAN!
2023-05-11
With my move to Kotlin, I started noticing just how outdated all the Java/JVM ecosystem packages are. Naturally, I looked around how to solve this issue and as it turns out there is a package manager called SDKMAN! for just this use case. So let's take a quick look...
Formerly known as GVM (Groovy enVironment Manager), SDKMAN! is a purpose build package manager for SDKs
and related software in the JVM world. Besides plain installation of SDKs, it allows for multiple
version sof the same package to be installed and switched easily. It is also very lightweight, only
relying on
bash
,
curl
and
zip/unzip
to be installed. As the cherry on top, it installs to your user's home directory by default, which makes
it even a compelling option, if you don't have administrator rights on the system your working with.
This is how your basic installation/workflow goes:
-
Install SDKMAN! via their amazing install script:
curl -s "https://get.sdkman.io" | bash -
Reopen your terminal or enter
source "$HOME/.sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh" -
Check that the installation is working with
sdk version, which should spit out the installed version of SDKMAN! -
Install your packages one by one with
`sdk install PACKAGE` -
If you want, you can also specify a specific version number via
sdk install PACKAGE VERSION, but it always chooses to the latest stable version by default, which makes it a hassle-free experience for the most part
Maybe this very short spotlight, was just as helpful for you as finding out about SDKMAN! was for me. If so, feel free to let me know about it in the comments...