Is there a link to GitHub for downloading a file in the latest release of a repository?

Question

A few years late, but I just implemented a simple redirect to support https://github.com/USER/PROJECT/releases/latest/download/package.zip. That should redirected to the latest tagged package.zip release asset. Hope it's handy!

Linux solution to get latest release asset download link (works only if release has one asset only)

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/boxbilling/boxbilling/releases/latest | grep browser_download_url | cut -d '"' -f 4

You can do an ajax request to get latest release download URL using the GitHub Releases API. It also shows when it was released and the download count:

function GetLatestReleaseInfo() {
  $.getJSON("https://api.github.com/repos/ShareX/ShareX/releases/latest").done(function(release) {
    var asset = release.assets[0];
    var downloadCount = 0;
    for (var i = 0; i < release.assets.length; i++) {
      downloadCount += release.assets[i].download_count;
    }
    var oneHour = 60 * 60 * 1000;
    var oneDay = 24 * oneHour;
    var dateDiff = new Date() - new Date(asset.updated_at);
    var timeAgo;
    if (dateDiff < oneDay) {
      timeAgo = (dateDiff / oneHour).toFixed(1) + " hours ago";
    } else {
      timeAgo = (dateDiff / oneDay).toFixed(1) + " days ago";
    }
    var releaseInfo = release.name + " was updated " + timeAgo + " and downloaded " + downloadCount.toLocaleString() + " times.";
    $(".download").attr("href", asset.browser_download_url);
    $(".release-info").text(releaseInfo);
    $(".release-info").fadeIn("slow");
  });
}

GetLatestReleaseInfo();

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<a class="download" href="https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX/releases/latest">Download</a>
<p class="release-info"></p>

It is important for you to set the default button URL to the releases page (like https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX/releases/latest) so if the browser does not support ajax (or javascript) or is too slow to get the URL, the download button will still work.

When the Ajax request completes, the URL of this button will change automatically to a direct download URL.

Edit:

I also made a downloads page that shows multiple releases which you can find here: https://getsharex.com/downloads/

Source code of it: https://github.com/ShareX/sharex.github.io/blob/master/js/downloads.js

From the command line using curl and jq, retrieves the first file of the latest release:

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/porjo/staticserve/releases/latest | \
  jq --raw-output '.assets[0] | .browser_download_url'

Another Linux solution using curl and wget to download a single binary file from the latest release page

curl -s -L https://github.com/bosun-monitor/bosun/releases/latest | egrep -o '/bosun-monitor/bosun/releases/download/[0-9]*/scollector-linux-armv6' | wget --base=http://github.com/ -i - -O scollector

Explanation:

curl -s -L is to silently download the latest release HTML (after following redirect)

egrep -o '...' uses regex to find the file you want

wget --base=http://github.com/ -i - converts the relative path from the pipeline to absolute URL

and -O scollector sets the desired file name.

may be able to add -N to only download if the file is newer but S3 was giving a 403 Forbidden error.

Just use one of the urls below to download the latest release: (took urls from boxbilling project for example): https://api.github.com/repos/boxbilling/boxbilling/releases

Download the latest release as zip: https://api.github.com/repos/boxbilling/boxbilling/zipball

Download the latest release as tarball: https://api.github.com/repos/boxbilling/boxbilling/tarball

Click on one of the urls to download the latest release instantly. As i wrote this lines it's currently: boxbilling-boxbilling-4.20-30-g452ad1c[.zip/.tar.gz]

UPDATE: Found an other url in my logfiles (ref. to example above) https://codeload.github.com/boxbilling/boxbilling/legacy.tar.gz/master

As noted previously, jq is useful for this and other REST APIs.

tl;dr - more details below

Assuming you want the macOS release:

URL=$( curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/atom/atom/releases/latest" \
   | jq -r '.assets[] | select(.name=="atom-mac.zip") | .browser_download_url' )
curl -LO "$URL"

Solution for atom releases

Note each repo can have different ways of providing the desired artifact, so I will demonstrate for a well-behaved one like atom.

Get the names of the assets published

curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/atom/atom/releases/latest" \
    | jq -r '.assets[] | .name'

atom-1.15.0-delta.nupkg
atom-1.15.0-full.nupkg
atom-amd64.deb
...

Get the download URL for the desired asset

Below atom-mac is my desired asset via jq's select(.name=="atom-mac.zip")

curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/atom/atom/releases/latest" \
    | jq -r '.assets[] | select(.name=="atom-mac.zip") | .browser_download_url'

https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/download/v1.15.0/atom-mac.zip

Download the artifact

curl -LO "https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/download/v1.15.0/atom-mac.zip"

jq Playground

jq syntax can be difficult. Here's a playground for experimenting with the jq above: https://jqplay.org/s/h6_LfoEHLZ

Security

You should take measures to ensure the validity of the downloaded artifact via sha256sum and gpg, if at all possible.