bug: asdf is shimming things it does not manage, and then erroring when trying to run them

[rynonl]

Describe the Bug

I use asdf to manage only a few things: node, pnpm, ruby, and terraform

=> asdf list
nodejs
  20.12.2
  20.15.0
  20.15.1
  20.18.0
 *22.12.0
pnpm
  9.15.0
ruby
  3.3.1
  3.3.3
  3.3.4
  3.3.5
  3.3.6
 *3.4.1
terraform
  1.8.5
  1.9.7

However, asdf is trying to shim a bunch of other stuff that I never asked it to manage:

 shims|⇒
⇒ ls
annotate             database_consistency ldiff                parallel_test        rackup               ruby-lsp-check       tilt
annotaterb           dotenv               node                 patience_diff        rails                ruby-lsp-launcher    typeprof
bootsnap             erb                  nokogiri             pnpm                 rake                 ruby-parse           vernier
brakeman             gem                  npm                  pnpm.cjs             rbs                  ruby-rewrite         vite
bundle               graphite             npx                  pnpx                 rdbg                 setup                yarn
bundler              gt                   packs                pnpx.cjs             rdoc                 sprockets            yarnpkg
chusaku              htmldiff             packwerk             posthog              ri                   stripe-console
codeownership        irb                  pagy                 publish              rspec                superblocks
console              jmespath.rb          parallel_cucumber    puma                 rubocop              syntax_suggest
corepack             kramdown             parallel_rspec       pumactl              ruby                 terraform
danger               launchy              parallel_spinach     racc                 ruby-lsp             thor

And now whenever I try to run some of these other executables, like gt for instance, I get errors like:

⇒ which gt
/Users/ryan/.asdf/shims/gt

⇒ gt
No version is set for command gt
Consider adding one of the following versions in your config file at /Users/ryan/Dev/infra/accounts/staging/.tool-versions
nodejs 20.15.1%    

I don't really understand how or why asdf is trying to manage these shims for me. gt is installed via homebrew.

Steps to Reproduce

asdf reshim
gt

Expected Behaviour

asdf does not try to shim packages it does not manage. Or at the very least, I expect that the shims it creates work properly.

Actual Behaviour

Errors when running packages shimmed by asdf that are actually managed elsewhere

Environment

⇒ asdf info  
OS:
Darwin MacBook-Pro---ryan-Aboon.local 24.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 24.3.0: Thu Jan  2 20:24:24 PST 2025; root:xnu-11215.81.4~3/RELEASE_ARM64_T6030 arm64

SHELL:
zsh 5.9 (arm64-apple-darwin24.0)

BASH VERSION:
3.2.57(1)-release

ASDF VERSION:
0.16.2

ASDF INTERNAL VARIABLES:
ASDF_DEFAULT_TOOL_VERSIONS_FILENAME=.tool-versions
ASDF_DATA_DIR=/Users/ryan/.asdf
ASDF_CONFIG_FILE=/Users/ryan/.asdfrc

ASDF INSTALLED PLUGINS:
nodejs    https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-nodejs.git           c5b7c40ea9ffc3470f44b6cf04a21e45dd6f81de
pnpm      https://github.com/jonathanmorley/asdf-pnpm.git      85221d309c0b8eaf029631b9c61786d15ecf897b
ruby      https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-ruby.git             98e32b9c38e146b164d651c96ccb6d5fa4c3af90
terraform https://github.com/asdf-community/asdf-hashicorp.git f1602b610105c6848c79eb95f2a833ecb48a973e

asdf plugins affected (if relevant)

No response

[mahyarmirrashed]

Encountering this too. This should have gone through more QA before being released. This is interrupting my workflow and delaying demonstrations that I am doing on my machine 😠

[Stratus3D]

@rynonl did you install any version of gt via nodejs installed with asdf? Run asdf where gt and it will show you a gt binary in asdf if one of your asdf tools installed it.

[rynonl]

No, that's exactly the issue. I installed gt with homebrew.

⇒ asdf where gt
No such plugin: gt
                   

[mockdeep]

I'm running into a similar issue. Not sure if it's the same thing, but asdf is shimming ruby gems that I have in local folders on my machine with soft links into my PATH. It causes Gem::GemNotFoundException because they are not installed as gems. I have to remove the shim and reload my environment in order to fix them.

[Stratus3D]

@rynonl what do you get when you run asdf which gt?

[rynonl]

@Stratus3D

⇒ asdf which gt
unexpected error: no versions set for gt

⇒ gt
No version is set for command gt
Consider adding one of the following versions in your config file at /Users/ryan/.asdf/shims/.tool-versions
nodejs 20.15.1

The shim file at~/.asdf/shims/gt contains the following:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# asdf-plugin: nodejs 20.15.1
exec asdf exec "gt" "$@"

Also, to be clear here - the issue is that asdf is trying to shim gt at all. It just should not be shimming gt, or anything else that asdf doesn't actively manage. I have gt installed and managed via homebrew.

[Stratus3D]

gt
No version is set for command gt
Consider adding one of the following versions in your config file at /Users/ryan/.asdf/shims/.tool-versions
nodejs 20.15.1

This message indicates that asdf has a located a gt in your nodejs 20.15.1 install. This is likely because you have a installed a npm package that provided a gt script/binary. I'd run asdf set nodejs 20.15.1 and then run asdf which gt to locate it.

asdf creates shims for everything on your system that it versions. If you use it to juggle node versions, and then install a npm package that provides it's own binary, that binary will be managed by asdf. Typically when users report shims for tools not managed by asdf it's because

Related issues:

• bug: asdf creates shim for command (ffmpeg) installed/managed via homebrew #1604
• No such command in 3.6.4 of python on "clear" command. asdf-community/asdf-python#31
• Git submodule fails with asdf error #693

[rynonl]

That worked after a reshim. However, I do not want asdf to manage the gt install. I want to continue managing that via homebrew.

Where is asdf looking for binaries in my node install? gt is not an included binary with a vanilla node installation that I am aware of.

[Stratus3D]

Where is asdf looking for binaries in my node install?

asdf which gt will show you the exact location of the gt binary in your node install switch to the version of node that has it (20.15.1 in your case). By default asdf looks in the installs bin/ directory for binaries. If you don't want asdf managing gt you'll need to find the nodejs package that added it and uninstall that package using your node package manager.

[Stratus3D]

Closing as I haven't seen any evidence here that this actually a problem.

If you've got a command that asdf is managing and you don't think it should, run asdf which <cmd> and it will show the location of the command in the asdf directory. If you've got a shim and asdf which <cmd> doesn't return a location for it then that is a bug - please report and I'll re-open this issue.

[rynonl]

If you've got a shim and asdf which doesn't return a location for it then that is a bug - please report and I'll re-open this issue.

i just want to point out that that's exactly what I experienced above. It seems like asdf is shimming a superset of executables installed across all versions of plugins that asdf manages instead of shimming just the current version of each plugin. So if thing 1.0 has an executable foo but thing 2.0 does not, foo will still get a shim even when thing is set to 2.0 and then that shim will be broken and return unexpected error: no versions set for foo when running asdf which foo.

If I'm understanding this correctly, this is not behavior I've seen with any other package manager, to my knowledge.

Thanks for your time here, btw.