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Before even deciding which Java to install, you have to decide which _version managers_ to use:

1. No version manager, download and install manually. Not that hard, since it's just a zip file and maybe set JAVA_HOME envvar. If you need multiple versions to co-exist, skip this.

2. Use OS' "native" package manager. Brew, apt, chocolatey.

3. Generic package manager like asdf.

4. SDKMAN!, JBang, jEnv, jabba...

Deciding is easy. But remembering which one you used 6 months ago when you want to install another version...

1 comments

I'd skip that and use mise. It's an asdf compatible manager and does so much more. It manages scripts (replacing make), environment variables and it's super fast.

I have a feeling somebody will link that xkcd post soon...

Perhaps. But I wouldn't be so sure. It has functionality to replace the following tools:

- make (via its tasks feature)

- direnv (via its environments features)

- Just about most package managers (via it's dev tools features)

It has backends for just about anything (aqua, cargo, asdf, gem, github, go, etc).

It allows for locking your tooling similar to a package.json lock file.

And the nice thing is that it does it a lot better those tools (I recently found out make gobbles up any error codes and returns 2).