Asdf install elixir 1.18.3 downloads zero-byte file (zip not found)

Grizzlih

Hi all,

I’m trying to install Elixir 1.18.3 with asdf on macOS Catalina (10.15.7), but the installation fails because the downloaded archive is empty. Here’s the full output:

sudo asdf install elixir 1.18.3
==> Checking whether specified Elixir release exists...
==> Downloading 1.18.3 to /Users/x/.asdf/downloads/elixir/1.18.3/elixir-precompiled-1.18.3.zip
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
==> Copying release into place
[/Users/x/.asdf/downloads/elixir/1.18.3/elixir-precompiled-1.18.3.zip]
  End-of-central-directory signature not found.  Either this file is not
  a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive.  In the
  latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
  the last disk(s) of this archive.
unzip:  cannot find zipfile directory in one of /Users/x/.asdf/downloads/elixir/1.18.3/elixir-precompiled-1.18.3.zip or
        /Users/x/.asdf/downloads/elixir/1.18.3/elixir-precompiled-1.18.3.zip.zip, and cannot find /Users/x/.asdf/downloads/elixir/1.18.3/elixir-precompiled-1.18.3.zip.ZIP, period.

It looks like asdf is downloading a zero-byte file instead of the actual precompiled release.

What I’ve tried so far:

Updated asdf itself (git -C ~/.asdf pull) and the Elixir plugin (asdf plugin-update elixir)
Removed stale downloads in ~/.asdf/downloads/elixir/1.18.3/
Retried with ASDF_DEBUG=1 (still shows a zero-byte download)
Installing different Elixir versions (e.g. 1.18.4, 1.18.3, and earlier) — all give the same result

Questions:

Is this a known issue with the precompiled Elixir 1.18.3/1.18.4 releases on GitHub?
Or could it be something wrong with my local setup (curl, TLS, certificates)?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

11 comments

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2025-09-08 09:46:53 UTC

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aseigo

In case you don’t figure it out with asdf, I can recommend mise. After the asdf rewrite, I decided to take stock as to what the options are and gave mise a try … and haven’t looked back, having found misemore ergonomic and reliable. It serves the same use cases as asdf, and so has been a drop-in replacement for my use of asdf.

Post #1

xir

That’s what I was going to mention too – mise. It’s simpler to use, it works both with shims and without them. I use it without them. All its benefits are listed on their website, but to me, it’s just simpler than asdf.

Post #2

dimitarvp

Well finally I can breathe a sigh of relief. I am not the only person on ElixirForum who knows about mise, after a year or two shilling for it here.

No shims, for one thing. To me that’s already a huge benefit by itself. But it can also work as a task runner, and it has even a few more functions on top of that + the version manager thing.

Post #3

Grizzlih

Thanks for suggesting mise! For now, I’ve mitigated it by using asdf with an OTP-pinned build:

asdf install elixir 1.18.4-otp-28

This works fine with my Erlang/OTP 28 on macOS Catalina. If I learn more about the zero-byte archive issue on 1.18.4, I’ll update the thread.

Post #4

bkilshaw

I’m unable to install 1.18.4-otp-28 myself; same issue with the zero-byte archive. I’m using Mise, but it’s the same issue if I download the archive directly from https://builds.hex.pm/builds/elixir/v1.18.4-otp-28.zip

Post #5

bkilshaw

Looks like it might be a CDN issue; a co-worker was able to install it fine (and download from the link above) so I connected to a VPN a few provinces over and it downloaded and installed fine.

Post #6

bretthazen

Looks like older versions are still serving up zero byte files, e.g., https://builds.hex.pm/builds/elixir/v1.16.3-otp-26.zip

Post #7

xir

Hmm.. it looks good to me. A proper .zip archive.

Post #8

nonamenecessary

No idea why the download is borked using asdf or mise but to workaround the installation failure with mise, I went to https://builds.hex.pm/builds/elixir/v1.18.4-otp-27.zip in my browser to download the complete zip (7.6mb) first. I then moved the .zip to ~/.local/share/mise/downloads/elixir/1.18.4-otp-27 and ran mise install elixir@1.18.4-otp-27.

That installed without issue for me, whereas running mise install elixir@1.18.4-otp-27 (or any other impacted version) without having manually placed the zip fails for the same reason, a zero byte archive.

Post #9