Here's my modest collection of global tools I install in my dotfiles: https://github.com/JanPokorny/dotfiles/blob/master/dot_confi...

Projects then have their own dependencies, e.g. https://github.com/i-am-bee/agentstack/blob/main/mise.toml

Mise also has a task runner which automatically uses correct tools. Onboarding a new team member is super easy now, they just need Mise, "mise install" and they're up.

I've been using mise as a pure version manager for a pretty long time, and I had no idea you could use it for general tools like this.

Same

I really prefer to lock the version numbers instead:

    mise use -g somepackage --pin

I can commit/rollback to known good versions. To upgrade:

    mise up -il

Not so long ago, I was outspoken against mise. I've since come around. It truly is a fantastic tool.

What were your criticisms, and what changed?

Mise now has lockfiles as a stable feature, which has the benefit of hash checking if you use Mise in a CI environment!

How does this even work? How does mise know how to install these things?

Mise has many backends. A lot comes from Aqua / asdf, but there's others like GitHub, npm, cargo, http, etc.

It's all fairly well documented here: https://mise.jdx.dev/dev-tools/backends/