Thanks to OP for mentioning vfox (version-fox) in the article. vfox as a project just five months ago, there is still a lot to do, welcome to those who use Windows as a development environment, to participate in the construction of the vfox plug-in ecosystem.
> I just unpack node to different folders and set PATH. Why would I need any tool for that?
To put it simply, vfox will help you do this. Unzip node, golang, etc. to $HOME/.version-fox/cache. When you write `vfox use node@10.1.1`, it will automatically configure PATH for you. Free your hands, you don't need to think about where to download nodejs, golang, etc. runtime, nor how to configure PATH. Especially on Windows, configuring PATH is still quite troublesome.
I've used all of these tools in conjunction with my own usage habits, which is why I'm developing vfox from scratch rather than based on asdf. so the issue at hand for vfox is the need to rebuild the plugin ecology. There's no way to utilise off-the-shelf asdf plugins.
I just looked at your plugin-template. This sounds good actually. Writing asdf plugins can be quite nasty. I like the approach of adding a lua dsl for plugin generation, not sure I like the dsl itself.
Compared to Cygwin, vfox is just a small tool which is more like scoop.
Simply put, while scoop can only install the latest version, vfox can install any version, and has some extra features for project development, such as using different versions for different projects, automatic switching between versions, and so on.
Explore the latest update of VersionFox in this walkthrough, where we dive into the newly introduced feature - Scopes. This video showcases how VersionFox now supports Global, Project, and Session scopes, enhancing your version management experience.
https://github.com/version-fox/vfox