SDKMAN

ID

sdkman

Home page

https://sdkman.io

Version requirement

>= 5

Platforms

🐧 Linux · 🍎 macOS

Operations

installed · outdated · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup

purl types

pkg:sdkman

CLI name

sdkman-init.sh

Extra search paths

~/.sdkman/bin

Forced environment

sdkman_auto_answer=true · sdkman_colour_enable=false

Issues and PRs

📦 manager: sdkman

Source

meta_package_manager/managers/sdkman.py

SDKMAN! manages parallel versions of multiple Software Development Kits on Unix-based systems.

Note

SDKMAN! primarily serves the JVM ecosystem: Java, Gradle, Maven, Kotlin, Scala, and ~115 other candidates. Each candidate is treated as a package.

Caution

The sdk command is a shell function, not a standalone binary, so mpm detects SDKMAN by its init script (sdkman-init.sh) rather than a binary on PATH and wraps every invocation in bash -c 'source <init> && sdk <args>'.

Note

SDKMAN has no read-only “outdated” verb, so outdated pipes n into sdk upgrade to capture the candidate list without applying any upgrade.

What mpm adds to sdkman

mpm reaches across every manager at once, not sdkman alone: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover sdkman alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your sdkman commands, in mpm

You already know sdkman: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With sdkman	With mpm
List what’s installed	sdk current	mpm --sdkman installed
Install a package	sdk install java 21.0.4-tem	mpm install pkg:sdkman/java
Upgrade one package	sdk upgrade java	mpm --sdkman upgrade java
Upgrade everything	sdk upgrade	mpm --sdkman upgrade --all
Remove a package	sdk uninstall java 21.0.4-tem	mpm remove pkg:sdkman/java
Clear caches	sdk flush	mpm --sdkman cleanup --cache

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations

Operation	Supported
installed	✓
outdated	✓
orphans
search
install	✓
upgrade	✓
upgrade_all	✓
remove	✓
sync	✓
cleanup	✓
doctor

Selecting and configuring sdkman

Deselect sdkman for a single run with --no-sdkman, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
sdkman = false

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every sdkman call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.managers.sdkman]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template sdkman prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes

A few jobs you would otherwise script around sdkman, one mpm command each:

• Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --sdkman dump sdkman.toml, then mpm restore sdkman.toml on the next one.

• Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --sdkman sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown

State of SDKMAN’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

• Registry: SDKMAN broker

• Retraction: Unpublish: the vendor release endpoint “supports POST and DELETE HTTP methods” (vendor API)

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --allow-unsupported-managers opts back in.

Version probe

The version is probed by running:

$ sdkman-init.sh version
SDKMAN!
script: 5.18.2
native: 0.4.6

and extracted with:

r"script:\s+(?P<version>\S+)"

Reference traces

Raw native outputs captured in the manager source: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know SDKMAN well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ sdk current
Using:
groovy: 4.0.22
java: 21.0.4-tem
scala: 3.4.2

Feed any of these through mpm and the raw output becomes one uniform table, the same shape for every manager: filter it, project columns, or export it (mpm --sdkman installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog

• 6.4.0 (2026-04-27)

  • Add remove operation. Closes #1775.

• 6.3.0 (2026-04-09)

  • Add SDKMAN! package manager with installed, outdated, install, upgrade, sync, and cleanup support. Closes #729.