This repository contains an action for use with GitHub Actions, which will install any GitHub release into your action environment:

This is especially useful when installing arbitrary Go binaries. It can lookup the latest version, or download a specific tag.

# ...
steps:
  - name: Install go-task
    uses: jaxxstorm/action-install-gh-release@v1.10.0
    with: # Grab the latest version
      repo: go-task/task

# ...
steps:
  - name: Install tf2pulumi
    uses: jaxxstorm/action-install-gh-release@v1.10.0
    with: # Grab a specific tag
      repo: pulumi/tf2pulumi
      tag: v0.7.0

steps:
  - name: Install tfsec
    uses: jaxxstorm/action-install-gh-release@v1.10.0
    with: # Grab a specific platform and/or architecture
      repo: aquasecurity/tfsec
      platform: linux
      arch: amd64

Use a repo scoped Personal Access Token (PAT) that has been created on a user with access to the private repository.

steps:
  - name: Install private tool
    uses: jaxxstorm/action-install-gh-release@v1.10.0
    with: # Grab from a private repository
      token: ${{ secrets.MY_PAT }}
      repo: my-org/my-private-repo

This action can use actions/cache under the hood. Caching needs to be enabled explicitly and only works for specific tags.

# ...
steps:
  - name: Install tf2pulumi
    uses: jaxxstorm/action-install-gh-release@v1.10.0
    with: # Grab a specific tag with caching
      repo: pulumi/tf2pulumi
      tag: v0.7.0
      cache: enable

Caching helps avoid Rate limiting, since this action does not need to scan tags and releases on a cache hit. Caching currently is not expected to speed up installation.

As described below this action defaults to assuming that a release is either a .tar.gz or a .zip archive but this may not always be true for all releases. For example, a project might release a pure binary, a different archive format, a custom file extension etc.

This action can change its extension-matching behavior via the extension-matching and extension parameters. For example to match on a .bz2 extension:

# ...
jobs:
  my_job:
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} # Github token scoped to job
    steps:
      - name: Install Mozilla grcov
        uses: jaxxstorm/action-install-gh-release@v1.10.0
        with: # Grab a specific file extension
          repo: mozilla/grcov
          tag: v0.8.12
          extension: "\\.bz2"

Here the extension parameter is used to provide a regular expression for the file extension(s) you want to match. If this is not specified then the action defaults to \.(tag.gz|zip). Since this is a regular expression being embedded into YAML be aware that you may need to provide an extra level of character escaping, in the above example we have a \\ used to escape the backslash and get an actual \. (literal match of the period character) in the regular expression passed into the action.

Alternatively, if a project produces pure binary releases with no file extension then you can install them as follows:

# ...
jobs:
  my_job:
    env:
      GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} # Github token scoped to job
    steps:
      - name: Install Open Telemetry Collector Builder (ocb)
        uses: jaxxstorm/action-install-gh-release@v1.10.0
        with: # Grab a pure binary
          repo: open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector
          tag: v0.62.1
          extension-matching: disable
          rename-to: ocb
          chmod: 0755

Note the use of the rename-to and chmod parameters to rename the downloaded binary and make it executable.

If the archive of the release contains binaries in a specific location, you can specify it with the binaries-location parameter. Note that the path is relative to the root of the archive. The option rename-to has no effect in this case. The option chmod is applied to all binaries.

  - name: Install the latest Wasmer version
    uses: jaxxstorm/action-install-gh-release@v1.10.0
      with:
      repo: wasmerio/wasmer
      binaries-location: bin
      chmod: 0755

If the repository's release contains multiplie assets (e.g. for many projects), you can specify the name of the relevant asset with the asset-name parameter. Binary-related options (i.e. rename-to, chmod, and extension-matching) can be specified to control whether to treat the asset as binary and/or modify it.

  - name: Install the latest wrpc version
    uses: jaxxstorm/action-install-gh-release@v1.10.0
    with:
      repo: bytecodealliance/wrpc
      asset-name: wit-bindgen-wrpc
      rename-to: wit-bindgen-wrpc
      chmod: 0755
      extension-matching: disable

By default, this action will look up the Platform and Architecture of the runner and use those values to interpolate and match a release package. The release package name is first converted to lowercase.

Multiple match patterns are used to find a viable asset:

• Machine Architecture (e.g. x86_64, arm64, amd64)
• (optional) Vendor (e.g. musl, glibc, gnu)
• OS (e.g. linux, darwin)
• Glibc implementation (e.g. musl, glibc, gnu)
• (optional, via extension-matching) Extension (e.g. tar.gz, zip)

Natively, the action will only match the following platforms (operating systems): linux, darwin, windows.

Some examples of matches:

• my_package_linux_x86_64.tar.gz (or .zip)
• my_package_x86_64_linux.tar.gz (or .zip)
• my_package.linux.x86_64.tar.gz (or .zip)
• my_package.x86_64.linux.tar.gz (or .zip)
• linux_x86_64_my_package.tar.gz (or .zip)
• x86_64_linux_my_package.tar.gz (or .zip)
• linux.x86_64.my_package.tar.gz (or .zip)
• x86_64.linux.my_package.tar.gz (or .zip)
• linux_x86_64.tar.gz (or .zip)
• x86_64_linux.tar.gz (or .zip)
• linux.x86_64.tar.gz (or .zip)
• x86_64.linux.tar.gz (or .zip)