One Liner to Download the Latest Release from Github Repo

One Liner to Download the Latest Release from Github Repo.md

• Use curl to get the JSON response for the latest release
• Use grep to find the line containing file URL
• Use cut and tr to extract the URL
• Use wget to download it

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/jgm/pandoc/releases/latest \
| grep "browser_download_url.*deb" \
| cut -d : -f 2,3 \
| tr -d \" \
| wget -qi -

I must admit that the awk based solution of @maxadamo seem to be the best and easiest. And also portable as it avoids seds x-platform issues. However, that only gives you the link, in my case 2 lines with filename, and the url. So you need to skip filename and wget url, like this:

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/NordicSemiconductor/nrf-udev/releases/latest | awk -F\" '/nrf-udev_1.*-all.deb/{print $(NF-1)}' | tail -1 | wget -i-

I must admit that the awk based solution of @maxadamo seem to be the best and easiest. And also portable as it avoids seds x-platform issues.

I'm curious what you mean by " seds x-platform issues".

@eabase

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/NordicSemiconductor/nrf-udev/releases/latest | awk -F\" '/nrf-udev_1.*-all.deb/{print $(NF-1)}' | tail -1 | wget -i-

Why use BOTH "curl" and "wget". They both do the same thing, but few development environments have both.

"awk" with a field separator of the double quote is a nice solution, and works to pull out the specific architecture required. "sed", "grep", or many of the other general tools can also do the job.

But... I have said before, the final solution generally depends of the specific repo, the environments that is running the code to pull the latest release required. There is no one answer, which is what makes this discussion so interesting.

@Mr-Bossman

I'm curious what you mean by " seds x-platform issues".

sed is not implemented equally across platforms (x-platform = "cross platform"), it also depends on local environment and if using POSIX. See sed switches for -R,-r,-E etc.. on different distros. It also depends on your bash and sh options via (set, shopt)...

@eabase
sed is not implemented equally across platforms (x-platform = "cross platform")...
It also depends on your bash and sh options via (set, shopt)...

First I ever heard of bash and sh options effecting any command that isn't a builtin to bash and sh (apart from command parsing that is). I'm pretty good with shell (35+ years experience)... Please enlighten!