Ansible - Download latest release binary from Github repo

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 release b. download the release

For a. I have something like which does not provide the actual release (ex. v0.11.53):

 - name: get latest Gogs release
  local_action:
    module: uri
    url: https://github.com/gogits/gogs/releases/latest
    method: GET
    follow_redirects: no
    status_code: 301
    register: release_url

For b. I have the below which works but needs constant updating. Instead of version i would need a variable set in a.:

- name: download latest
    become: yes
    become-user: "{{gogs_user}}"
    get_url:
     url: https://github.com/gogs/gogs/releases/download/v0.11.53/linux_amd64.tar.gz
    dest: "/home/{{gogs_user}}/linux_amd64.tar.gz"

Thank you!

Solution

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 :)