bindown is a command-line utility to download, verify and install binary files. It is intended to be used in development and ci environments where it is important to guarantee the same version of the same binary is downloaded every time.

This is the preferred method for ci or development environments. Each release contains a shell script bootstrap-bindown.sh that will download bindown for the current os. Place bootstrap-bindown.sh from the latest release in your project's repository. Don't forget to make it executable first (chmod +x bootstrap-bindown.sh on most systems). Then you can call bootstrap-bindown.sh before bindown in the projects bootstrap script or Makefile.

./bootstrap-bindown.sh -h
./bootstrap-bindown.sh: download the bindown binary

Usage: ./bootstrap-bindown.sh [-b bindir] [-d]
  -b sets bindir or installation directory, Defaults to ./bin
  -d turns on debug logging

If you happen to already have go installed on your system, you can install bindown with:

GO111MODULE=on go get -u github.com/willabides/bindown/v3/cmd/bindown 

Note the lowercase willabides. Pro tip: Your life will be easier with a lowercase GitHub username.

The directory where bindown will cache downloads and extracted files. This is relative to the directory where the configuration file resides. cache paths should always use / as a delimiter even on Windows or other operating systems where the native delimiter isn't /.

Defaults to <path to config file>/.bindown

The directory that bindown installs files to. This is relative to the directory where the configuration file resides. install_directory paths should always use / as a delimiter even on Windows or other operating systems where the native delimiter isn't /.

Defaults to <path to config file>/bin

Dependencies are all the dependencies that bindown can install. It is a map where the key is the dependency's name.

Vars are key value pairs that are used in constructing url, archive_path and bin values using go templates. If you aren't familiar with go templates, all you need to know is that to use the value from a variable named "foo", you would write {{.foo}}. Go templates can do more than this, but that's all that is practical for bindown.

In addition to variables explicitly defined in vars, bindown adds os and arch variables based on the current system.

Consider this dependency:

myproject:
  url: https://github.com/me/myproject/releases/download/v{{.version}}/myproject_{{.version}}_{{.os}}_{{.arch}}.tar.gz
  archive_path: myproject_{{.version}}_{{.os}}_{{.arch}}/myproject
  vars:
    version: 1.2.3

When bindown is run for a linux/amd64 system, it will download from https://github.com/me/myproject/releases/download/v1.2.3/myproject_1.2.3_linux_amd64.tar.gz and use the archive path myproject_1.2.3_linux_amd64/myproject

Substitutions provides replacement values for vars. The primary use case is for projects that don't use the same values for os and arch.

substitutions:
  arch:
    "386": i386
    amd64: x86_64
  os:
    darwin: Darwin
    linux: Linux
    windows: Windows

Templates provide base values for dependencies. If a dependency has an unset value, the value from its template is used.

For vars, the value is initially set to the template's var map which is then overridden by values from the dependency. substitutions is handled similarly.

overrides concatenated with the template values coming first.

Template configuration is identical to dependencies.

Overrides allow you to override values for certain operating systems or system architectures.

It is a list of overrides that each contain a matcher and a dependency. Dependency properties are the same as described in dependencies. Matchers match "os", "arch" or vars. A matcher matches if any of its values match the config value. Matchers can be semver constraints or strings.

overrides:
  - matcher:
      os:
        - windows
    dependency:
      vars:
        archivepathsuffix: .exe
  - matcher:
      arch:
        - arm
        - arm64
      version:
        - ">=1.0.0"
    dependency:
      archive_path: special/path/for/arm

Usage: bindown <command>

Flags:
  -h, --help                 Show context-sensitive help.
      --json                 write json instead of yaml
      --configfile=STRING    file with bindown config. default is the first one of bindown.yml,
                             bindown.yaml, bindown.json, .bindown.yml, .bindown.yaml or
                             .bindown.json ($BINDOWN_CONFIG_FILE)
      --cache=STRING         directory downloads will be cached ($BINDOWN_CACHE)
      --version              show version and exit

Commands:
  install-completions            install shell completions
  download                       download a dependency but don't extract or install it
  extract                        download and extract a dependency but don't install it
  install                        download, extract and install a dependency
  format                         formats the config file
  dependency list                list configured dependencies
  dependency add                 add a template-based dependency
  dependency remove              remove a dependency
  dependency info                info about a dependency
  dependency show-config         show dependency config
  dependency update-vars         update dependency vars
  template list                  list templates
  template remove                remove a template
  template update-from-source    update a template from source
  template update-vars           update template vars
  template-source list           list configured template sources
  template-source add            add a template source
  template-source remove         remove a template source
  supported-system list          list supported systems
  supported-system add           add a supported system
  supported-system remove        remove a supported system
  add-checksums                  add checksums to the config file
  validate                       validate that installs work
  init                           create an empty config file

Run "bindown <command> --help" for more information on a command.