github-latest

A quick little utility to download the latest release of a given project from GitHub.

This is a very specific tool for my own needs, but is open-source in case it is of use to others, either directly or as example code.

The next version will support unzipping the downloaded file (if you chose zip).

Note: It does not use project versions or tags, it uses the publish date and will download the latest.

Download

Binary executables can be downloaded for Windows, Linux and MacOS X. These are available as assets on the Release page.

Usage

Usage: latest [-avxXh?] owner project [tar|zip|unzip|asset [ outfile]]
 e.g.: latest -x appurist github-latest zip latest.zip
   or: latest appurist github-latest asset   (list assets)
   or: latest appurist github-latest asset latest.exe   (download latest.exe)
Options are:
    -a all: display all release versions/tags (no download)
    -x expand: (unzip) the zip file after download
    -X expand verbose: unzip and show files
    -v version: show version info
    -h or -? help: show this usage syntax

The default is to download the zip file, and the output filename (outfile) is either latest.zip or latest.tar.gz, depending on the format requested.

Choosing unzip is the same as zip (it downloads the .zip from GitHub), however it automatically expands the zip file into a new "latest-unzipped" folder. Alternatively, specifying a -x option before the other arguments also implies a zip format and expands the files. Specifying -X (capitalized) expands the zip in a verbose manner, naming every file expanded.

Note that when unzipping, it replaces the top-level GitHub numbered folder name (e.g. "appurist-github-latest-acdd162") with a fixed "latest-unzipped" folder name for easy scripting and automation. When expanding the zip file, it does not remove the downloaded zip file.

For example, to download the zip for the latest release of this project:

latest appurist github-latest

This will download the latest release as latest.zip. To automatically extract the contents of the zip file:

latest appurist github-latest unzip

This will download the latest release as latest.zip, and extract its contents into a "latest-unzipped" folder.

To download the tarball for the latest release of this project:

latest appurist github-latest tar

This will download the latest release as latest.tar.gz.

It is also possible to specify the download file (or path):

latest appurist github-latest zip outfile.zip

This will download the latest zip release as outfile.zip.

Release 1.2: Support for Downloading Assets

This update provides new support for assets attached to GitHub releases.

This update adds new functionality to list or download assets.:

For example, using this command, to fetch the latest, um, latest executable itself for Windows, you would use:

latest appurist github-latest asset latest.exe

To list available assets, just don't specify one:

latest appurist github-latest asset

To Build

Prerequisites: You must have Node.js installed to build this, as well as yarn (or you can run "npm install" and substitute "npm run" everywhere else you see "yarn").

To build this tool with yarn:

yarn install
yarn build

This will produce an executable named latest (or latest.exe on Windows).