FAQs

I don't want to put a mise.toml/.tool-versions file into my project since git shows it as an untracked file

Use mise.local.toml and put that into your global gitignore file. This file should never be committed.

If you really want to use a mise.toml or .tool-versions, here are 3 ways to make git ignore these files:

• Adding mise.toml to project's .git/info/exclude. This file is local to your project so there is no need to commit it.
• Adding mise.toml to project's .gitignore file. This has the downside that you need to commit the change to the ignore file.
• Adding mise.toml to global gitignore (core.excludesFile). This will cause git to ignore mise.toml files in all projects. You can explicitly add one to a project if needed with git add --force mise.toml.

What is the difference between "nodejs" and "node" (or "golang" and "go")?

These are aliased. For example, mise use [email protected] is the same as mise install [email protected]. This means it is not possible to have these be different plugins.

This is for convenience so you don't need to remember which one is the "official" name. However if something with the aliasing is acting up, submit a ticket or just stick to using "node" and "go". Under the hood, when mise reads a config file or takes CLI input it will swap out "nodejs" and "golang".

While this change is rolling out, there is some migration code that will move installs/plugins from the "nodejs" and "golang" directories to the new names. If this runs for you you'll see a message but it should not run again unless there is some kind of problem. In this case, it's probably easiest to just run rm -rf ~/.local/share/mise/installs/{golang,nodejs} ~/.local/share/mise/plugins/{golang,nodejs}.

Once most users have migrated over this migration code will be removed.

What does mise activate do?

It registers a shell hook to run mise hook-env every time the shell prompt is displayed. mise hook-env checks the current env vars (most importantly PATH but there are others like GOROOT or JAVA_HOME for some tools) and adds/removes/updates the ones that have changed.

For example, if you cd into a different directory that has java 18 instead of java 17 specified, just before the next prompt is displayed the shell runs: eval "$(mise hook-env)" which will execute something like this in the current shell session:

export JAVA_HOME=$HOME/.local/share/installs/java/18
export PATH=$HOME/.local/share/installs/java/18/bin:$PATH

In reality updating PATH is a bit more complex than that because it also needs to remove java-17, but you get the idea.

You may think that is excessive to run mise hook-env every time the prompt is displayed and it should only run on cd, however there are plenty of situations where it needs to run without the directory changing, for example if .tool-versions or mise.toml was just edited in the current shell.

Because it runs on prompt display, if you attempt to use mise activate in a non-interactive session (like a bash script), it will never call mise hook-env and in effect will never modify PATH because it never displays a prompt. For this type of setup, you can either call mise hook-env manually every time you wish to update PATH, or use shims instead (preferred). Or if you only need to use mise for certain commands, just prefix the commands with mise x --. For example, mise x -- npm test or mise x -- ./my_script.sh.

mise hook-env will exit early in different situations if no changes have been made. This prevents adding latency to your shell prompt every time you run a command. You can run mise hook-env yourself to see what it outputs, however it is likely nothing if you're in a shell that has already been activated.

mise activate also creates a shell function (in most shells) called mise. This is a trick that makes it possible for mise shell and mise deactivate to work without wrapping them in eval "$(mise shell)".

Windows support?

While mise runs great in WSL, native Windows is also supported, though via the use of shims until someone adds powershell support.

As you'll need to use shims, this means you won't have environment variables from mise.toml unless you run mise via mise x or mise run—though that's actually how I use mise on my mac so for me that's my preferred workflow anyway.

How do I use mise with http proxies?

Short answer: just set http_proxy and https_proxy environment variables. These should be lowercase.

This may not work with all plugins if they are not configured to use these env vars. If you're having a proxy-related issue installing something specific you should post an issue on the plugin's repository.

How do the shorthand plugin names map to repositories?

e.g.: how does mise plugin install elixir know to fetch https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf-elixir?

We maintain an index of shorthands that mise uses as a base. This is regularly updated every time that mise has a release. This repository is stored directly into the codebase here.

Does "node@20" mean the newest available version of node?

It depends on the command. Normally, for most commands and inside of config files, "node@20" will point to the latest installed version of node-20.x. You can find this version by running mise latest --installed node@20 or by seeing what the ~/.local/share/mise/installs/node/20 symlink points to:

$ ls -l ~/.local/share/mise/installs/node/20
[...] /home/jdx/.local/share/mise/installs/node/20 -> node-v20.0.0-linux-x64

There are some exceptions to this, such as the following:

• mise install node@20
• mise latest node@20
• mise upgrade node@20

These will use the latest available version of node-20.x. This generally makes sense because you wouldn't want to install a version that is already installed.

How do I migrate from asdf?

• Install mise and set up mise activate as described in the getting started guide
• remove asdf from your shell rc file
• Run mise install in a directory with an asdf .tool-versions file and mise will install the tools

Note that mise does not consider ~/.tool-versions files to be a global config file like asdf does. mise uses a ~/.config/mise/config.toml file for global configuration.

Here is an example script you can use to migrate your global .tool-versions file to mise:

mv ~/.tool-versions ~/.tool-versions.bak
cat ~/.tool-versions.bak | tr ' ' '@' | xargs -n2 mise use -g

Once you are comfortable with mise, you can remove the .tool-versions.bak file and uninstall asdf

How compatible is mise with asdf?

mise should be able to read/install any .tool-versions file used by asdf. Any asdf plugin should be usable in mise. The commands in mise are slightly different, such as mise install [email protected] vs asdf install node 20.0.0—this is done so multiple tools can be specified at once. However, asdf-style syntax is still supported: (mise install node 20.0.0). This is the case for most commands, though the help for the command may say that asdf-style syntax is supported. When in doubt, just try asdf syntax and see if it works—it probably does.

UPDATE (2025-01-01): mise was designed to be compatible with the asdf written in bash (<=0.15). The new asdf written in go (>=0.16) has commands mise does not support like asdf set. mise set is an existing command that is completely different than asdf set—in mise that sets env vars.

This isn't important for usability reasons so much as making it so plugins continue to work that call asdf commands inside of the plugin code.

Using commands like mise use may output .tool-versions files that are not compatible with asdf, such as using fuzzy versions. You can set --pin or MISE_PIN=1 to make mise use output asdf-compatible versions in .tool-versions. Alternatively, you can have mise.toml and .tool-versions sitting side-by-side. mise.toml tools will override tools defined in a .tool-versions in the same directory.

That said, in general compatibility with asdf is no longer a design goal. It's long been the case that there is no reason to prefer asdf to mise so users should migrate. While plenty of users have teams which use both in tandem, issues with such a setup are unlikely to be prioritized.

How do I disable/force CLI color output?

mise uses console.rs which honors the clicolors spec:

• CLICOLOR != 0: ANSI colors are supported and should be used when the program isn’t piped.
• CLICOLOR == 0: Don’t output ANSI color escape codes.
• CLICOLOR_FORCE != 0: ANSI colors should be enabled no matter what.

Is mise secure?

Providing a secure supply chain is incredibly important. mise already provides a more secure experience when compared to asdf. Security-oriented evaluations and contributions are welcome. We also urge users to look after the plugins they use, and urge plugin authors to look after the users they serve.

For more details see SECURITY.md.

What is usage?

usage (https://usage.jdx.dev/) is a spec and CLI for defining CLI tools.

Arguments, flags, environment variables, and config files can all be defined in a Usage spec. It can be thought of like OpenAPI (swagger) for CLIs.

usage can be installed with mise using mise use -g usage and is required to get the autocompetion working. See autocompletion.

You can leverage usage in file tasks to get auto-completion working, see file tasks arguments.