How does nvm.fish 2.0 compare to Schniz/fnm?

[franciscolourenco]

Hi @jorgebucaran do you have thoughts on https://github.com/Schniz/fnm ?
Would you recommend using fish-nvm instead?

Thanks!

[jorgebucaran]

I'll try to be fair in this comparison, but it might be difficult. You've been warned. Let's dive in!

• fnm appends code to your config.fish (or creates one if there isn't one). I didn't expect this.
• fnm is written in OCaml Rust, which is super interesting in its own right.
  • nvm.fish is written in Fish, which is the most logical choice for a shell utility that demands seamless shell integration.
• fnm pollutes my home directory, it saves its state in ~/.fnm
  • nvm.fish follows the XDG Base Directory spec just like Fish does.
• fnm requires you to launch a new shell after installing it
  • nvm.fish works out of the box via Fisher.
• fnm runs fnm env --multi | source on shell startup. I am not a fan of piping stuff to source.
  • nvm.fish uses Fish canonical autorun mechanism: configuration snippets.
• I had to curl the fnm installer and pipe it to bash to install fnm.
  • nvm.fish is easier to install, update, and uninstall via Fisher.
• I had to debug an error after installing fnm. It turns out I had to run brew install openssl.
  • nvm.fish works out of the box. No dependencies other than Fish are required.
• fnm completions are mediocre.
  • nvm.fish tab completions are amazing.
    • nvm installTab shows you every available version to install + aliases. (Screen)
    • nvm useTab shows you only versions you can use (already downloaded) + aliases. (Screen)
    • nvm uninstallTab shows you only versions you can uninstall + aliases. (Screen)

Benchmarks

$ ~/D/h/bin> time fish -c "fnm install latest"
Looking for node latest for darwin x64
Downloading https://nodejs.org/dist/latest/node-v11.14.0-darwin-x64.tar.xz to /Users/jb/.fnm/downloads/v11.14.0.tar.xz
Extracting /Users/jb/.fnm/downloads/v11.14.0.tar.xz to /Users/jb/.fnm/node-versions/v11.14.0
        9.08 real         1.49 user         1.70 sys
$ ~/D/h/bin> time fish -c "nvm use latest"
fetching https://nodejs.org/dist/v11.14.0/node-v11.14.0-darwin-x64
######################################################################## 100.0%
        8.05 real         1.02 user         1.44 sys

[franciscolourenco]

Thanks!

[jorgebucaran]

I just released 2.0. The new nvm.fish has been rewritten for Fish 3.0, and special attention has been paid to performance and optimizing every aspect of it. As a result nvm.fish feels snappier than ever while still giving you that seamless integration with Fish.