mise as a daily version manager

Mise, pronounced “MEEZ ahn plahs”, is a version manager of version managers. It became a structural part of my daily workflow as a software engineer.

Mise manages versions across platforms, languages, and projects without shell hooks or shims.

ergonomics

Compare mise with nvm (Node Version Manager):

autoload -U add-zsh-hook

load-nvmrc() {
  local nvmrc_path
  nvmrc_path="$(nvm_find_nvmrc)"

  if [ -n "$nvmrc_path" ]; then
    local nvmrc_node_version
    nvmrc_node_version=$(nvm version "$(cat "${nvmrc_path}")")

    if [ "$nvmrc_node_version" = "N/A" ]; then
      nvm install
    elif [ "$nvmrc_node_version" != "$(nvm version)" ]; then
      nvm use
    fi
  elif [ -n "$(PWD=$OLDPWD nvm_find_nvmrc)" ] && [ "$(nvm version)" != "$(nvm version default)" ]; then
    echo "Reverting to nvm default version"
    nvm use default
  fi
}

add-zsh-hook chpwd load-nvmrc
load-nvmrc

That snippet comes straight from the nvm docs: https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/blob/e4e34ec7f9500709f938e7d0188107741ace70e2/README.md?plain=1#L741C7-L761C5

You put it in ~/.zshrc, so every time you cd into a Node.js project, it installs the right version and switches your shell to it.

With mise, after activation, the same task is one line:

mise use node@latest

semantics

To decide which tool version to use, mise looks for a mise.toml file in the current directory and its parents. Global config lives at ~/.config/mise/config.toml and can look like this:

[tools]
bun = "latest"
node = "22"
usage = "latest"

[settings]
idiomatic_version_file_enable_tools = ["node"]

configuration hierarchy

As described in the docs, mise supports nested config that cascades from broad to specific:

~/.config/mise/config.toml      # Global defaults
~/work/mise.toml                # Work-specific tools
~/work/project/mise.toml        # Project-specific overrides
~/work/project/.tool-versions   # Legacy asdf compatibility

Each level can override or extend the previous one, which gives you fine control over tool versions across contexts.

Mise works as a drop-in replacement for asdf. It reads the same .tool-versions files and can use asdf plugins through the asdf backend.

People coming from asdf usually find mise to be a faster and simpler asdf.

built-in tools

mise ships with some plugins built into the CLI, written in Rust.

You can list the core plugins with mise registry -b core.

Tool	Install command
Bun	mise use -g bun@latest
Elixir	mise use -g erlang elixir
Java	mise use -g java@temurin
Swift	mise use -g swift
Node	mise use -g node@20
Zig	mise use -g zig@latest

final thoughts

Tools like mise make development more approachable. It fits any modern setup and speeds up onboarding.

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