Ansible - Download latest release binary from Github repo

Question

With Ansible please advise how i could download the latest release binary from Github repository. As per my current understanding the steps would be: a. get URL of latest releas

Answer 1

I am using the following recipe to download and extract latest watchexec binary for Linux from GitHub releases.

- hosts: localhost                                                     
  tasks:                                                               

  - name: check latest watchexec
    uri:
      url: https://api.github.com/repos/watchexec/watchexec/releases/latest
      return_content: true
    register: watchexec_latest

  - name: "installing watchexec {{ watchexec_latest.json.tag_name }}"
    loop: "{{ watchexec_latest.json.assets }}"
    when: "'x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.xz' in item.name"
    unarchive:
      remote_src: yes
      src: "{{ item.browser_download_url }}"
      dest: "{{ ansible_env.HOME }}/bin/"
      keep_newer: yes
      extra_opts:
      - --strip=1
      - --no-anchored
      - watchexec

tar extra_opts explained here.

This still downloads the binary every time a playbook is called. As an improvement, it might be possible to use set_fact for caching node_id attribute that corresponds to the unpacked file.