Products · Product
asdf
Raised as a usability problem by 25 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2008–2025), in 21 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Command-line interface is hard to remember, forcing constant help lookupsUnreviewed
20082026- Asdf commands are hard to remember because they are unintuitive2024-08-12
- Asdf's command-line interface is hard to remember, forcing constant help lookups2024-04-04
- Can't figure out how to use ASDF properly or what the workflow is2023-02-23
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 28 complaints
- Command-line tool no longer prints options for commands, making it harder to use2025-11-12
- Must install plugins before commands work as expected2025-06-29
- Does not search the current directory for packages, unlike other build systems2025-03-01
- Asdf has bad UX that the commenter wanted to avoid2024-12-08
- Asdf's user experience is terrible, though it works reliably2024-12-08
- Asdf commands are hard to remember because they are unintuitive2024-08-12
- Asdf's command-line interface is hard to remember, forcing constant help lookups2024-04-04
- Reshimming fails half the time, and old Node versions only install by building from source2023-04-27
- Can't figure out how to use ASDF properly or what the workflow is2023-02-23
- Name clash with another asdf tool makes searching for info hard2023-02-17
- Confusing use of 'add' for plugins versus 'install' for runtime versions2023-01-30
- Page lags badly when scrolling on Firefox mobile2022-10-25
- Must manually install plugin, install version, then set it, with no prompts for missed steps2022-10-25
- Version lookup is too slow to run in a shell prompt, taking about 100 ms2022-10-25
- Shims resolve the version on every call, making tool startup noticeably slower2022-10-24
- Install does not auto-install plugins needed by .tool-versions, forcing manual steps2022-08-12
- Command line interface is verbose, clunky and unintuitive2022-08-12
- Install fails on macOS due to read-only root directory, making it a pain2022-04-05
- Hacking it to support other languages is hard, and pushing its limits makes it unusable2022-04-05
- Doesn't understand how to use it; expects projects in a central location2021-05-27
- Hard to find ASDF best practices amid too much noise2021-05-27
- Installing the node plugin is tedious, and asdf forgets the current node version2021-02-04
- Confusing terminology for systems and packages makes packaging in Lisp hard to figure out2020-12-03
- Hard to use and hard to understand, even though it solves a complex problem2018-03-15
- Overengineered, impossible to debug and impossible to learn2017-09-30
- Verbose, awkward invocation that users must type and explain each time2008-12-20
- Installing packages requires becoming a PGP expert, which a beginner shouldn't need2008-05-30
- Lisp module system documentation is hard to find and ASDF is hard to understand2008-02-01