[bmitc]

> I had to install a couple of alternative python versions on my dev machine at work and found it was easiest for me to just build from source and `make altinstall` with a custom prefix set.

That's basically what asdf does, just automated.

[king_geedorah]

Does asdf automatically pull in its own copies of libraries for relevant functionality? For example I needed headers for readline in order to get that going on my compiled interpreters. If it avoids that then that could be a reason to use one over the other at least on new systems.

Edit: Decided to peruse the code for the python asdf plugin myself and it seems to just use pyenv under the hood anyway, so I guess it's not really a question of what asdf does anyway.