Dev Tools Management Overview

UniRTM handles the installation and switching of development tools on your system automatically. Whether you are working with node, python, go, or raw binaries published to GitHub, UniRTM manages them seamlessly without relying on sluggish shell scripts.

How it works

When you run unirtm use node@20, two things happen:

1. Resolution & Download: UniRTM resolves the version from its configured backend, downloads the binary to a global cache directory (usually ~/.local/share/unirtm/installs), and makes it executable.
2. Registration: It writes the dependency to your local .unirtm.toml.

When you navigate to this directory in your terminal, UniRTM detects .unirtm.toml and injects its internal bin directory into your system $PATH. This guarantees that when you type node, you are executing the exact version specified for this project.

Backends

A core difference between UniRTM and legacy tool managers is how it fetches software. UniRTM uses a pluggable backend architecture:

• Core Plugins: UniRTM ships with core plugins compiled directly into its Go binary. Tools like Node.js, Go, and Python have native support with maximum download speeds and checksum validation.

• GitHub Backend: You can install almost any tool directly from GitHub releases without needing a custom plugin.

  unirtm use github:cli/cli@latest

• Cargo/NPM/Pip Backends: UniRTM can proxy installations through other package managers, managing the resulting binary versions independently per project.

Tool Resolution Order

UniRTM resolves tool versions by inspecting the following locations (in order):

1. UNIRTM_NODE_VERSION (Environment variables)
2. .unirtm.toml (Current directory)
3. .nvmrc or .node-version (Legacy files, if enabled)
4. .unirtm.toml (Parent directories, recursively up to root)
5. ~/.config/unirtm/config.toml (Global config)

If a tool is declared but not installed locally, UniRTM will gracefully fallback or prompt you to run unirtm install.