Automatically Download the Latest Software Release from GitHub with Python

import requests
import sys
from pathlib import Path

def download_latest_release(owner: str, repo: str, output_dir: str = ".") -> None:
    """Download the latest release asset from a GitHub repository."""
    url = f"https://api.github.com/repos/{owner}/{repo}/releases/latest"
    response = requests.get(url)
    response.raise_for_status()
    release_data = response.json()
    assets = release_data.get("assets", [])
    if not assets:
        print(f"No assets found for latest release of {owner}/{repo}")
        return
    # Download the first asset (commonly the binary/archive)
    asset = assets[0]
    asset_url = asset["browser_download_url"]
    filename = asset["name"]
    output_path = Path(output_dir) / filename
    
    print(f"Downloading {filename} from {owner}/{repo}...")
    asset_response = requests.get(asset_url, stream=True)
    asset_response.raise_for_status()
    with open(output_path, "wb") as f:
        for chunk in asset_response.iter_content(chunk_size=8192):
            f.write(chunk)
    print(f"Saved to {output_path}")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # Example: download the latest release from python/cpython (source code archive)
    download_latest_release("python", "cpython")