How to download 'latest' version programatically

[rungitringit]

Hello,
I'd like to install this app as a part of a Linux SOE I'm building. I wish to use a native package (deb and rpm) but as there's no repository available, how can I ensure the systems I manage always have the latest version?

Github doesn't provide a 'latest' version tag and while I can see there's a "latest-linux.yml" file available, it only seems to be downloadable from the specific version URL of the release. I won't know these version numbers in advance.

So, how can I programmatically ensure that the latest version of the package is always sourced from here please?

Thank you!

[davidjgraph]

https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/linking-to-releases

e.g. https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases/latest

[rungitringit]

Thanks @davidjgraph I didn't realise Github had added that! Awesome that makes life easy for many sources too.

[rungitringit]

Thanks for the link @davidjgraph but I'm afraid this has not been resolved.

I'd love to be able to download a fixed URL for a specific file like: https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases/latest/drawio-amd64-latest.deb or failing that, at least be able to get https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases/latest/latest-linux.yml .

Unfortunately the link you provided, https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases/latest is redirected to a HTML page which contains the links I need. While someone could write some python to parse that, it's beyond my time/ability for now.

EDITS: Clarified and fixed deb reference

[davidjgraph]

OK, then we don't know the answer. It's more a generic github question.

[davidjgraph]

curl -sL https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases/latest/download/latest-linux.yml -o /tmp/latest-linux.yml
VERSION=$(awk '/^version:/ {print $2}' /tmp/latest-linux.yml)
DEB_NAME=$(awk '/url: drawio-amd64.*\.deb/ {print $3}' /tmp/latest-linux.yml)
curl -sL -o /tmp/drawio.deb \
  "https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases/download/v${VERSION}/${DEB_NAME}"

[rungitringit]

OK, then we don't know the answer. It's more a generic github question.

Thanks David. Is there any way you are able to apply a tag to the latest release and remove it from the last release each time you do a release?

I hacked together this work-around script for now, but it is fragile as any change to the download paths, or your version numbering would break it. (EDIT: Someone more confident with regex could probably improve it)

#!/bin/bash
# Potentially fragile script to ensure draw.io electron app is up to date.
# Run from cron once a week.

curl --silent --location --output /tmp/drawio-index.html https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases/latest

# Fragile, index format or filename could change.
URL=$( grep drawio-amd64 /tmp/drawio-index.html | cut -d\" -f2 )

# Fragile, URL could change in future.
SRC_VER=$( echo "${URL}" | cut -d'v' -f2 | cut -d'/' -f1 )

if dpkg-query --show --showformat='${Status}' draw.io | grep --silent ' install'
then
    CUR_VER=$( dpkg-query --show --showformat='${Version}' draw.io )
    if dpkg --compare-versions "${CUR_VER}" "ge" "${SRC_VER}"
    then
        # Current installed version is newer or the same, cleanup and exit
        rm /tmp/drawio-index.html
        exit 0
    fi
fi

curl --silent --location --output /tmp/drawio-x86_64-latest.deb "${URL}"
sudo apt-get install --quiet -y /tmp/drawio-x86_64-latest.deb && rm /tmp/drawio-x86_64-latest.deb
rm /tmp/drawio-index.html

[svarrette-anssi]

In complement, and sorry if it's naive, but I wonder how the sha512 field of the latest-linux.yml is encoded such that it can be used to verify the checkum of the download file (I'm trying to automate it in my ansible playbook).

Ex for the .deb package :

$ sha512sum /tmp/drawio-amd64-29.3.0.deb 
2e2d3b98891ade20741e6be4384bdf77b76484356c7e839ff6dd305a242e83699f02654269e1293baaa144db46de61f697d5be35f99ecb5bcaa3ea1c11fcfca1  /tmp/drawio-amd64-29.3.0.deb

# some trials to check what could have been used... 
$ openssl passwd -6 $(sha512sum /tmp/drawio-amd64-29.3.0.deb | awk '{print $1}')
$6$rzKnbX8OzL5FQjWf$WS7A45dMEuS51FPr4EkVfRx9vwq9kPl.obOjQgoyVhxtMNw2e612ui88t6O7lTJxxuv7P8jELLF0XeGSOqvCO0
$ sha512sum /tmp/drawio-amd64-29.3.0.deb | awk '{print $1}' | base64
MmUyZDNiOTg4OTFhZGUyMDc0MWU2YmU0Mzg0YmRmNzdiNzY0ODQzNTZjN2U4MzlmZjZkZDMwNWEy
NDJlODM2OTlmMDI2NTQyNjllMTI5M2JhYWExNDRkYjQ2ZGU2MWY2OTdkNWJlMzVmOTllY2I1YmNh
YTNlYTFjMTFmY2ZjYTEK

when the manifest file proposes:

# latest-linux.yml
version: 29.3.0
files:
  - url: drawio-x86_64-29.3.0.AppImage
    sha512: m9jWx5myc+Xf00SUH+Mh+i9lI+8rvqg71wNhS/j98/aDEbNXf3T+tREjUQ0aoT9UI+x0Gl3IU56omCcb0ClXGg==
    size: 150957131
    blockMapSize: 158815
  - url: drawio-amd64-29.3.0.deb
    sha512: Li07mIka3iB0HmvkOEvfd7dkhDVsfoOf9t0wWiQug2mfAmVCaeEpO6qhRNtG3mH2l9W+Nfmey1vKo+ocEfz8oQ==
    size: 120171688
  - url: drawio-x86_64-29.3.0.rpm
    sha512: knfepqjiGITGPmpv8Nz28TkNvxCTnDTO3AZbuzjF/ykV5YVJm6E+2k4k7m4T6dGwCzodee9R1XlHkEKHSt1l1A==
    size: 105561845
path: drawio-x86_64-29.3.0.AppImage
sha512: m9jWx5myc+Xf00SUH+Mh+i9lI+8rvqg71wNhS/j98/aDEbNXf3T+tREjUQ0aoT9UI+x0Gl3IU56omCcb0ClXGg==
releaseDate: '2026-01-08T23:39:02.267Z'