How to download GitHub Release from private repo using command line

Shell Problem Overview

GitHub guide explains 2 way to authorize but looks neither of those works with the Release files.

as a result of:

curl -u 'username' -L -o a.tgz https://github.com/company/repository/releases/download/TAG-NAME/A.tgz

There always is something like

<!DOCTYPE html>
<!--
Hello future GitHubber! ...

Shell Solutions

Solution 1 - Shell

To download release file from private repo, you can use Personal access token which can be generated at settings/tokens with Full control of private repositories scope.

Then download the asset with curl command (change with appropriate values):

curl -vLJO -H 'Authorization: token my_access_token' 'https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/releases/assets/:id'

or if you're using an OAuth app, use:

curl -u my_client_id:my_client_secret https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/releases/assets/:id

where:

:owner is your user or organisation username;
:repo is your repository name;

:id is your asset id, can be found in tag release URL, like:

  https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/releases/tags/:tag

:token is your personal access token (can be created at /settings/tokens;

Note: Using access_token as a query param is deprecated.

See: Repositories API v3 at GitHub

Here is the Bash script which can download asset file given specific name of file:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Script to download asset file from tag release using GitHub API v3.
# See: http://stackoverflow.com/a/35688093/55075    
CWD="$(cd -P -- "$(dirname -- "$0")" && pwd -P)"

# Check dependencies.
set -e
type curl grep sed tr >&2
xargs=$(which gxargs || which xargs)

# Validate settings.
[ -f ~/.secrets ] && source ~/.secrets
[ "$GITHUB_API_TOKEN" ] || { echo "Error: Please define GITHUB_API_TOKEN variable." >&2; exit 1; }
[ $# -ne 4 ] && { echo "Usage: $0 [owner] [repo] [tag] [name]"; exit 1; }
[ "$TRACE" ] && set -x
read owner repo tag name <<<$@

# Define variables.
GH_API="https://api.github.com"
GH_REPO="$GH_API/repos/$owner/$repo"
GH_TAGS="$GH_REPO/releases/tags/$tag"
AUTH="Authorization: token $GITHUB_API_TOKEN"
WGET_ARGS="--content-disposition --auth-no-challenge --no-cookie"
CURL_ARGS="-LJO#"

# Validate token.
curl -o /dev/null -sH "$AUTH" $GH_REPO || { echo "Error: Invalid repo, token or network issue!";  exit 1; }

# Read asset tags.
response=$(curl -sH "$AUTH" $GH_TAGS)
# Get ID of the asset based on given name.
eval $(echo "$response" | grep -C3 "name.:.\+$name" | grep -w id | tr : = | tr -cd '[[:alnum:]]=')
#id=$(echo "$response" | jq --arg name "$name" '.assets[] | select(.name == $name).id') # If jq is installed, this can be used instead. 
[ "$id" ] || { echo "Error: Failed to get asset id, response: $response" | awk 'length($0)<100' >&2; exit 1; }
GH_ASSET="$GH_REPO/releases/assets/$id"

# Download asset file.
echo "Downloading asset..." >&2
curl $CURL_ARGS -H "Authorization: token $GITHUB_API_TOKEN" -H 'Accept: application/octet-stream' "$GH_ASSET"
echo "$0 done." >&2

Before running, you need to set your GITHUB_API_TOKEN with your GitHub token (see: /settings/tokens at GH). This can be placed in your ~/.secrets file, like:

GITHUB_API_TOKEN=XXX

Example script usage:

./get_gh_asset.sh :owner :repo :tag :name

where name is your filename (or partial of it). Prefix script with TRACE=1 to debug it.

In case you wonder why curl fails sometimes with (as mentioned in other answer):

> Only one auth mechanism allowed; only the X-Amz-Algorithm query parameter, Signature query string parameter or the Authorization header should be specified.

when running like:

curl -vLJ -H 'Authorization: token <token>' -H 'Accept: application/octet-stream' https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/releases/assets/<id>

this is because you're specifying multiple mechanism at the same time, so S3 server doesn't know which one to use, therefore you have to choose only one, such as:

X-Amz-Algorithm query parameter
Signature query string parameter (X-Amz-Signature)
Authorization header (Authorization: token <token>)

and since GitHub redirects you from asset page (when requesting application/octet-stream), it populates credentials automatically in query string and since curl is passing over the same credentials in the request header (which you've specified), therefore they're conflicting. So as for workaround you can use access_token instead.

Solution 2 - Shell

We had to download release assets from private GitHub repos fairly often, so we created fetch, which is an open source, cross-platform tool that makes it easy to download source files and release assets from a git tag, commit, or branch of public and private GitHub repos.

For example, to download the release asset foo.exe from version 0.1.3 of a private GitHub repo to /tmp, you would do the following:

GITHUB_OAUTH_TOKEN="your token"
fetch --repo="https://github.com/foo/bar" --tag="0.1.3" --release-asset="foo.exe" /tmp

Solution 3 - Shell

Seems both authentication methods only work for the API endpoints. There's an API endpoint for downloading release assets (docu):

GET /repos/:owner/:repo/releases/assets/:id

But one will need to know the asset's numerical ID for that. I asked their support whether they could add an API endpoint to download release assets by name (like they have for tarballs).

Update: Response from Github support: > We don't offer any API like you're suggesting. We try to avoid brittle URLs that would change if the tag or filename of the release asset change. I'll take your feedback to the team to discuss further.

Solution 4 - Shell

Here is curl & jq one;)liner:

CURL="curl -H 'Authorization: token <auth_token>' \
      https://api.github.com/repos/<owner>/<repo>/releases"; \
ASSET_ID=$(eval "$CURL/tags/<tag>" | jq .assets[0].id); \
eval "$CURL/assets/$ASSET_ID -LJOH 'Accept: application/octet-stream'"

Change parts surrounded with <> with your data. To generate auth_token go to github.com/settings/tokens

If you like to login with password use this (note it will ask for password twice):

CURL="curl -u <github_user> https://api.github.com/repos/<owner>/<repo>/releases"; \
ASSET_ID=$(eval "$CURL/tags/<tag>" | jq .assets[0].id); \
eval "$CURL/assets/$ASSET_ID -LJOH 'Accept: application/octet-stream'"

Solution 5 - Shell

I found out the answer in this comment: https://github.com/request/request/pull/1058#issuecomment-55285276

curl is forwarding the authentication header in the request to the AmazonS3 bucket, where the Github release assets are stored. Error response from S3:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Error>
 <Code>InvalidArgument</Code>
 <Message>
   Only one auth mechanism allowed; only the X-Amz-Algorithm query parameter, Signature query string parameter or the Authorization header should be specified
 </Message>
 <ArgumentName>Authorization</ArgumentName>
 <ArgumentValue>token <yourtoken> </ArgumentValue><RequestId>4BEDDBA630688865</RequestId> <HostId>SXLsRKgKM6tPa/K7g7tSOWmQEqowG/4kf6cwOmnpObXrSzUt4bzOFuihmzxK6+gx</HostId>
</Error>

One line wget solution:

wget --auth-no-challenge --header='Accept:application/octet-stream' https://<token>:@api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/releases/assets/:id -O app.zip

Try:curl -i -H "Authorization: token <token>" -H "Accept:application/octet-stream" https://<token>:@api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/releases/assets/:id, for some more details. Add -L to see the S3 error message.

Solution 6 - Shell

Here is a "one-liner" using wget for making HTTP requests and python for JSON parsing:

(export AUTH_TOKEN=<oauth-token>; \
 export ASSET_ID=$(wget -O - https://api.github.com/repos/<owner>/<repo>/releases/tags/<tag>?access_token=$AUTH_TOKEN | python -c 'import sys, json; print json.load(sys.stdin)["assets"][0]["id"]'); \
 wget --header='Accept:application/octet-stream' -O <download-name> https://api.github.com/repos/<owner>/<repo>/releases/assets/$ASSET_ID?access_token=$AUTH_TOKEN)

To use it, just replace <oauth-token>, <owner>, <repo>, <tag> and <download-name> with appropriate values.

Explanation:

The first statement (export AUTH_TOKEN=<oauth-token>) sets GitHub OAuth token which is used by the subsequent wget commands.
The second statement has two parts:
1. The wget -O - https://api.github.com/repos/<owner>/<repo>/releases/tags/<tag>?access_token=$AUTH_TOKEN part gets GitHub release information from a tag name and prints it on stdout.

The python -c 'import sys, json; print json.load(sys.stdin)["assets"][0]["id"]' part parses JSON from stdin and extracts the id of the (first) release asset.

The third statement (wget --header='Accept:application/octet-stream' -O <tarball-name>.tar.gz https://api.github.com/repos/<owner>/<repo>/releases/assets/$ASSET_ID?access_token=$AUTH_TOKEN)) gets a single GitHub release asset by id and stores it to a file.
The outer parentheses create a subshell and ensure exported environment variables are discarded afterwards.

Solution 7 - Shell

An easier working solution is to use .netrc to store credentials. This way, curl does not forward credentials to Amazon S3 Bucket

In ~/.netrc file (should be created with 0600 file permission):

machine api.github.com
login yourusername
password yourpassword

Then use the curl -n option to use .netrc:

curl -L -O -J -n -H "Accept:application/octet-stream" https://api.github.com/repos/:owner/:repo/releases/assets/:id

Solution 8 - Shell

Use gh release download to easily script downloads. gh auth login first to authorise.

So to download the examples URL https://github.com/company/repository/releases/download/TAG-NAME/A.tgz use:

gh release download --repo company/repository TAG-NAME -p 'A.tgz'

Solution 9 - Shell

Like @dwayne I solved this using the gh CLI which you would also need to to install. As I was inside a docker container I needed to install curl, dirmngr, then the gh CLI and then download the release like below. Also shows how to authenticate using a personal token to the gh cli, and unzip the release files (a tarball in my case).

FROM debian:10.9 as base
RUN apt update \
 # Install package dependencies
 && apt install -y \
    build-essential \
    wget \
    dirmngr \
    curl

# Install GH CLI - see https://github.com/cli/cli/blob/trunk/docs/install_linux.md
RUN curl -fsSL https://cli.github.com/packages/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg | gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg && \
   echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/githubcli-archive-keyring.gpg] https://cli.github.com/packages stable main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/github-cli.list > /dev/null && \
   apt update && \
   apt install -y gh

# auth to github with PAT and download release
ARG RELEASE_TOKEN
RUN echo $RELEASE_TOKEN | gh auth login --with-token && \
   cd /opt && \
   gh release download YOUR_TAG_HERE --repo https://github.com/SOME_ORG/SOME-REPO && \
   tar -xjf SOME-RELEASE-FILES.tar.bz2 -C /opt && \
   rm SOME-RELEASE-FILES.tar.bz2

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	keiw	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Shell	kenorb	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Shell	Josh Padnick	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Shell	njam	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Shell	tworec	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Shell	phedoreanu	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Shell	tjanez	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Shell	FF_Dev	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Shell	Dwayne	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 9 - Shell	alastairtree	View Answer on Stackoverflow