GitHub URL for latest release of the _download file_?

Question

Although this question is similar to GitHub latest release, it's actually different -- it's about a link that means "the latest version of the download file itself".

GitHub provides a "Latest" URL that redirects to the information page for the latest release. For example: https://github.com/reactiveui/ReactiveUI/releases/latest will redirect to https://github.com/reactiveui/ReactiveUI/releases/tag/5.99.6 (as I type this; or to the page for a newer version, someday).

That's great but I need a URL to the download file itself. In this example, the .zip file associated with the green download button, https://github.com/reactiveui/ReactiveUI/releases/download/5.99.6/ReactiveUI-5.99.6.zip (as I type this; or to a newer zip file, someday).

Why? I want to give the URL to curl, as part of a Travis CI script, to download the latest version.

I guessed at a few URLs like /releases/download/latest/file.zip (substituting "latest" for the version part) and /releases/download/file.zip but those 404.

Is there any way to do this -- in the context of a shell script and curl (note: not in a browser page with JS)?

Answer 1

For releases that do not contain the version number or other variable content in their assets' names, you can use a URL of the format:

 https://github.com/owner/repository/releases/latest/download/ASSET.ext 

As per the docs:

If you'd like to link directly to a download of your latest release asset you can link to /owner/name/releases/latest/download/asset-name.zip.

Answer 2

Here is a way to do it w/o Github if you have a single download in the release:

wget $(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/USERNAME/REPONAME/releases/latest | grep 'browser_' | cut -d\" -f4) 

It is pretty easy (though not pretty), and of course you can swap out wget for another curl call if you want to pipe it to something.

Basically, the curl call nets you a JSON structure, and I'm just using basic shell utilities to extract the URL to the download.