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

Github has an API to manipulate the release which is documented.

so imagine you want to get the latest release of ansible (which belong to the project ansible) you would

• call the url https://api.github.com/repos/ansible/ansible/releases/latest
• get an json structure like this

{
  "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/ansible/ansible/releases/5120666",
  "assets_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/ansible/ansible/releases/5120666/assets",
  "upload_url": "https://uploads.github.com/repos/ansible/ansible/releases/5120666/assets{?name,label}",
  "html_url": "https://github.com/ansible/ansible/releases/tag/v2.2.1.0-0.3.rc3",
  "id": 5120666,
  "node_id": "MDc6UmVsZWFzZTUxMjA2NjY=",
  "tag_name": "v2.2.1.0-0.3.rc3",
  "target_commitish": "devel",
  "name": "THESE ARE NOT OUR OFFICIAL RELEASES",
  ...
  },
  "prerelease": false,
  "created_at": "2017-01-09T16:49:01Z",
  "published_at": "2017-01-10T20:09:37Z",
  "assets": [

  ],
  "tarball_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/ansible/ansible/tarball/v2.2.1.0-0.3.rc3",
  "zipball_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/ansible/ansible/zipball/v2.2.1.0-0.3.rc3",
  "body": "For official tarballs go to https://releases.ansible.com\n"
}

• get the value of the key tarball_url
• download the value of the key retrieved just above

In ansible code that would do

- hosts: localhost                                                     
  tasks:                                                               

  - uri:                                                               
      url: https://api.github.com/repos/ansible/ansible/releases/latest
      return_content: true                                             
    register: json_reponse                                             

  - get_url:                                                           
      url: "{{ json_reponse.json.tarball_url }}"                       
      dest: ./ansible-latest.tar.gz       

I let you adapt the proper parameters to answer your question :)

Answer 2

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.