ghinst

README

ghinst

Install binaries from GitHub releases to ~/.local/bin.

Install

go install github.com/tebeka/ghinst@latest

Usage

ghinst owner/repo[@version]

Install the latest release:

ghinst junegunn/fzf

Install a specific version:

ghinst junegunn/fzf@v0.54.0

How It Works

ghinst fetches the release from the GitHub API, selects the asset matching your OS and architecture, downloads it, verifies the GitHub-provided checksum when available, extracts the binary, and installs it to ~/.local/ghinst/owner/repo@version/. A symlink is created in ~/.local/bin/. If GitHub does not provide a checksum for the asset, ghinst prints a warning and continues.

You can change the installation directory location by setting the GHINST_DIR environment variable.

By default, assets and extracted binaries are limited to 200 MiB. Use -max-size to lower or raise that limit. Values without a suffix are treated as bytes, and you can also use suffixes such as kb, mb, or gb:

ghinst -max-size 314572800 owner/repo
ghinst -max-size 750mb owner/repo

HTTP requests time out after 30s by default. Use -http-timeout with any duration format accepted by time.ParseDuration:

ghinst -http-timeout 45s owner/repo
ghinst -http-timeout 2m30s owner/repo

Authentication

For private repos or to avoid API rate limits, set GITHUB_TOKEN:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=your_token_here

License

MIT