I had to install a couple of alternative python versions on my dev machine at work and found it was easiest for me to just build from source and `make altinstall` with a custom prefix set. From there I just always work in virtual environments. This doesn't seem to have created any major problems for me, so something like asdf doesn't feel necessary. Is there something serious that I've missed or is this just a case of different preferred workflows?
> I had to install a couple of alternative python versions on my dev machine at work and found it was easiest for me to just build from source and `make altinstall` with a custom prefix set.
Does asdf automatically pull in its own copies of libraries for relevant functionality? For example I needed headers for readline in order to get that going on my compiled interpreters. If it avoids that then that could be a reason to use one over the other at least on new systems.
Edit: Decided to peruse the code for the python asdf plugin myself and it seems to just use pyenv under the hood anyway, so I guess it's not really a question of what asdf does anyway.
That's not an unreasonable question. I don't really have a good answer to it outside of I found building and installing the couple that I needed myself to be fine and don't mind invoking as `python3.11` or what have you, since it's only different when I'm initialising my venvs.
How do you update the list of installed python versions?
Generally asdf shines when you need more than one system installed - say a html or SQL language server that depends on node in addition to python for your main app.
