Every .NET SDK your projects need, side by side

dv install 10.0         # newest 10.0 SDK, from Microsoft
dv install 8            # newest 8.x
cd ~/code/legacy && dv pin 8.0
dotnet --version        # 8.0.426
cd ~/code/new && dotnet --version   # 10.0.402

The problem is not installing .NET once

It is keeping several SDKs on one machine and controlling which one each project gets.

.NET is built to install side by side, but the system-wide installers put everything in one place that needs admin rights to change, and the dotnet host only ever listens to global.json. There is no “default”, no override for one command, and installing a preview to try it quietly moves every unpinned project onto it.

dv keeps every SDK under one directory you own and decides which one runs — and it decides the way dotnet itself would.

Microsoft's own SDKs

Nothing is rebuilt. dv reads Microsoft’s release metadata and installs the archive published for your machine, so every SDK, preview and old patch Microsoft ships is available the day it ships — no dv update needed.

global.json, read exactly

No new version file. dv pin writes global.json, and dv applies rollForward with the same rules as the dotnet host’s resolver — ported from its source, not its documentation.

Right outside your terminal too

Resolution runs through real files on PATH, not a shell hook. Editors, language servers, CI runners and git hooks inherit PATH and nothing else — a hook never fires for them. dv’s shims do not have that problem.

Verified, or not installed

Every archive is checked against the sha512 Microsoft publishes before it is unpacked, and verification fails closed: a missing or malformed hash is an error, never a reason to skip the check.

What a version switch costs

1. Install once per SDK. dv install 10.0 fetches one archive and unpacks it. Nothing is compiled, so it takes about as long as the download.

2. Pin per project. dv pin 10.0 writes global.json, which you commit. Everyone on the project — and Visual Studio, Rider and CI — gets the same SDK.

3. Switch by changing directory. No shell reload, no daemon, no use command. cd, and dotnet is a different SDK.

Every runtime, for every SDK

An app built for net8.0 needs the 8.0 runtime even when SDK 10 builds it. dv runs each SDK from an install root that holds that SDK and every installed runtime, so a project multi-targeting net8.0;net10.0 builds, tests and runs on both — with no extra installs and no NuGet downloads of targeting packs. The roots are hard links, so they cost no extra disk. See how dv runs an SDK.

What dv is not

It does not replace NuGet, or dotnet tool. dv is the SDK half: getting the right SDKs onto the machine and pointing dotnet at the right one. Packages, local tools and global tools work exactly as they always do.

It does not touch a system-wide .NET. dv never writes outside its own directory, needs no admin rights, and leaves /usr/local/share/dotnet or C:\Program Files\dotnet alone. dv doctor tells you when one of those is shadowing dv on PATH.

Where it runs

macOS, Linux (glibc and musl) and Windows, on x64 and Arm64 — anywhere Microsoft publishes an SDK. The client is a single Rust binary with no runtime dependencies. See platforms.