what is the best practice of distributing binaries from a github project? [closed]

Question

what is the best practice of distributing binaries from a github project?

I can think of:

• Create a bin folder in your project where you keep a copy of the binaries. However, github is meant to store source code and not binaries Storing large and regularly changing binaries may be expensive qua diskspace and bandwidth?
• Upload a copy of the binaries to the github pages of the project, or use a separate web site for hosting your binaries. However, that is not always feasible, and requires more (hand)work to keep the binaries up to date, I rather want to have the binaries updated automatically or with a single action.

Answer 1

As of December 11, 2012 the Downloads feature on GitHub is deprecated. The article Distributing large binaries recommends using an external service:

We recommend Amazon S3 for storage paired with CloudFront for serving via CDN, or other services such as SourceForge.

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However, since 2d July 2013, you now can define a release.

Releases, a workflow for shipping software to end users.
Releases are first-class objects with changelogs and binary assets that present a full project history beyond Git artifacts. They're accessible from a repository's homepage:

• Releases are accompanied by release notes and links to download the software or source code.
• Following the conventions of many Git projects, releases are tied to Git tags. You can use an existing tag, or let releases create the tag when it's published.
• You can also attach binary assets (such as compiled executables, minified scripts, documentation) to a release. Once published, the release details and assets are available to anyone that can view the repository.

Answer 2

It is clear to me now that it is important not to store binaries in your github project itself. Thus, you will need to store binaries elsewhere. Possible solutions I came across are:

• Store the binaries in a separate submodule (dalores idea). It makes sense to store them in your projects github pages, which you use to host your projects website via github.
• If you have only a few binaries or zip file only, you can upload them to github via Downloads -> Upload a new file. This feature is quite limited though, you cannot put files in structured folders.
• In case of java jar files, there are solutions out there like Nexus for managing your libraries.
• Store the binaries on a completely separate site that you host yourself