install-release 0.8.1

Simple package manager to easily install, update and manage any tool directly from github or gitlab releases

🐧 Install Release

CLI to install any CLI

Install Release gives you the ir command to install and keep single-binary CLI tools updated on Linux, macOS, and WSL. It works with GitHub/GitLab releases and supports mise/aqua registry entries and Docker images.

This can be any tool you want to install, which is pre-compiled for your device and present on a supported provider.

INFO: It's mainly for installing tools that are not directly available officially by package managers like apt, yum, pacman, brew etc.

Highlights

GitHub and GitLab releases

ir is mainly built for installing CLI tools straight from GitHub or GitLab releases. Give it a repo URL, and it finds the right release asset for your system.

# Install from GitHub
ir get https://github.com/denoland/deno

# Install from GitLab
ir get https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/cli -n glab

Package mode (--pkg)

Some tools ship better as .deb, .rpm, or AppImage packages. Use --pkg when you want ir to install that package instead of picking a standalone binary.

# Install any package from GitHub releases
ir get https://github.com/redis/RedisInsight --pkg

Extra providers

• mise/aqua: Install tools from registry metadata.

# Install from mise/aqua registry
ir get mise@terraform

• Docker: Run container images like local CLIs.

# Install from Docker image (with custom name)
ir get [e-mail]/azure-cli -n az

Table of Contents 📚

• Table of Contents 📚
• Highlights
• Getting started ⚡
  • Installation
  • Manage your tools
• Example usage ir --help 💡
  • Install completion for cli 🎠
  • Install tool from GitHub/GitLab releases 🌈
    • Install as system package (deb/rpm/appimage) 📦
  • Install tool via mise registry 🧩
  • Install Docker image as a CLI tool 🐳
  • Install specific release asset from GitHub/GitLab releases 🔦
    • Method 1: Interactive Selection (Recommended)
    • Method 2: Command-line Flag
  • List installed tools 📋
  • Remove installed release ❌
  • Update all previously installed tools to the latest version 🕶
    • Update installed system packages 📦
  • Pull state templates for installing tools 📄
  • Hold Update to specific installed tool ✋
  • Configure tool installation path 🗂️
  • Configure updates for pre-release versions 🔌
  • Configure GitHub/GitLab tokens for higher rate limit 🔑

Getting started

Installation

Option 1: Standalone binary (recommended)

Download the latest binary for your platform from GitHub Releases — no Python required.

Requires libmagic as a runtime dependency.

# Linux x86_64
curl -Lo ~/bin/ir https://github.com/Rishang/install-release/releases/latest/download/install-release-linux-x86_64
chmod +x ~/bin/ir

# Bash
# echo 'export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc 

# Zsh
# echo 'export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc 

# Fish
# echo 'set -gx PATH $HOME/bin $PATH' >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish 

Option 2: pip install

Prerequisites:

• Python 3.9 or higher
• pip
• libmagic

pip install -U install-release

---

Set up the PATH for shell (e.g. ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc):

Tools installed via ir will be installed to ~/bin by default.

export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" 

If you want to change the installation path, you can use the ir config --path <path> flag.

---

Manage your tools

Example: Installing deno (Rust-based JavaScript runtime) directly from its GitHub releases:

# Usage: ir get [GITHUB-URL or GITLAB-URL or mise@<TOOL> or docker@<IMAGE-URI>]

# GitHub URL
❯ ir get https://github.com/denoland/deno

# mise registry
❯ ir get mise@terraform

# Docker image with latest tag
❯ ir get docker@hashicorp/terraform:latest

Verify the installation:

❯ which deno
~/bin/deno

❯ deno --version
deno 1.46.3 ...

Example: Installing GitLab CLI with a custom binary name glab:

❯ ir get https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/cli -n glab

Verify the installation:

❯ which glab
~/bin/glab

❯ glab --version
glab 1.80.0 ...

Once installed, you can manage your tools with these simple commands:

• List: ir ls — See all installed tools and versions.
• Update: ir upgrade — Upgrade all installed tools to their latest releases.
• Remove: ir rm deno — Remove a tool from your system.

For more details, check the Table of Contents.

Example usage ir --help 💡

# Help page

❯ ir --help
Usage: ir [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  GitHub / GitLab / Mise release installer based on your system (Linux/MacOS)

  Options:
    --install-completion   Install completion for the current shell.
    --show-completion      Show completion for the current shell, to copy it or customize the installation.
    --help                Show this message and exit.

  Commands:
    get      | Install CLI tool from GitHub/GitLab releases or mise registry
    upgrade  | Upgrade all installed CLI tools from their repositories
    ls       | List all installed CLI tools
    rm       | Remove any installed CLI tool
    config   | Set configs for Install-Release
    state    | Show the current stored state of Install-Release
    pull     | Install tools from the remote install-release state URL
    hold     | Keep an installed CLI tool's updates on hold.
    me       | Update the Install-Release tool.

For sub-command help use: ir <sub-command> --help

Example: ir get --help

Install completion for cli 🎠

# ir --install-completion [SHELL: bash|zsh|fish|powershell]
# Example for zsh:
ir --install-completion zsh

Install tool from GitHub/GitLab releases 🌈

❯ ir get "https://github.com/ahmetb/kubectx"

📑 Repo     : ahmetb/kubectx
🌟 Stars    : 13295
✨ Language : Go
🔥 Title    : Faster way to switch between clusters and namespaces in kubectl

                    📦 Available Assets for kubectx
┏━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Asset ID ┃ Filename                           ┃ Size (MB) ┃ Downloads ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 1        │ kubectx_v0.9.4_linux_x86_64.tar.gz │ 1.0       │ 43811     │
└──────────┴────────────────────────────────────┴───────────┴───────────┘

                              🚀 Install: kubectx
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name    ┃ Selected Item                      ┃ Version ┃ Size Mb ┃ Downloads ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ kubectx │ kubectx_v0.9.4_linux_x86_64.tar.gz │ v0.9.4  │ 1.0     │ 43811     │
└─────────┴────────────────────────────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴───────────┘
Install selected tool? [Y/n/ Asset ID]: y
 INFO     Downloaded: 'kubectx_v0.9.4_linux_x86_64.tar.gz' at /tmp/dn_kubectx_ph6i7dmk                                                               utils.py:159
 INFO     install /tmp/dn_kubectx_ph6i7dmk/kubectx /home/noobi/bin/kubectx                                                                  core.py:132
 INFO     Installed: kubectx

# checking if kubectx is installed
❯ which kubectx
/home/noobi/bin/kubectx

❯ kubectx --version
0.9.4

Install as system package (deb/rpm/appimage) 📦

If the release asset files provide a package file for your system, you can install tools as a system package (deb/rpm/appimage) instead of a standalone binary by using the --pkg flag.

This is useful for tools that provide .deb, .rpm or appimage releases that might need other system package dependencies to work.

# Example installation of RedisInsight, a dashboard to manage Redis
❯ ir get https://github.com/redis/RedisInsight --pkg

Install tool via mise registry 🧩

Some tools (like Terraform, Packer, etc.) don't publish platform-specific binaries on GitHub releases — they host their own download URLs instead. For these tools, ir can resolve the correct download URL via the mise / aqua registry using the mise@ prefix.

# Usage: ir get mise@<tool-name>
❯ ir get mise@terraform

# Install a specific version (inline or via --tag)
❯ ir get mise@terraform:v1.12.0
❯ ir get mise@terraform -t v1.12.0

                     Install terraform (via mise/aqua)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Tool      ┃ Version  ┃ File                     ┃ URL                              ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ terraform │ v1.12.0  │ terraform_1.12.0_linu... │ https://releases.hashicorp.c...  │
└───────────┴──────────┴──────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┘
Install selected tool? [Y/n]: y

Tools installed via mise@ are also tracked by ir ls and upgraded with ir upgrade just like GitHub/GitLab tools.

Note: The mise provider currently only supports tools with HTTP-based download URLs in the aqua registry. Tools that use github_release type assets should be installed directly via their GitHub URL (ir get <github-url>) instead.

Install Docker image as a CLI tool 🐳

ir can wrap any Docker image as a local CLI tool using the docker@ prefix. It pulls the image, detects its entrypoint, and writes an executable wrapper script to ~/bin/<toolname> that proxies all invocations through docker run.

# Usage: ir get docker@<image>[:<tag>]
❯ ir get docker@hashicorp/terraform

# Install a specific tag (inline or via --tag)
❯ ir get docker@hashicorp/terraform:1.7.0
❯ ir get docker@hashicorp/terraform -t 1.7.0

# Custom tool name
❯ ir get [e-mail]/azure-cli -n az

         Install terraform (via Docker)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Tool      ┃ Image                 ┃ Tag    ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━┩
│ terraform │ hashicorp/terraform   │ latest │
└───────────┴───────────────────────┴────────┘
Install selected tool? [Y/n]: y

• Latest tags (latest) are checked for updates via digest comparison during ir upgrade — only re-pulled when the remote image has changed.
• Pinned tags (e.g. 1.7.0) are held from auto-upgrade; use ir upgrade --force to re-pull.
• The wrapper mounts the current directory into the container at /tmp/cmd, so the tool sees your local files.

Install specific release asset from GitHub/GitLab releases 🔦

In rare cases where install-release does not automatically find the correct release file for your system, you can manually specify the release file name. There are two ways to do this:

Method 1: Interactive Selection (Recommended)

During the installation prompt, review the available release assets and type the asset ID you want to install:

❯ ir get https://github.com/ekzhang/bore

📑 Repo     : ekzhang/bore
🌟 Stars    : 8234
✨ Language : Rust
🔥 Title    : A simple CLI tool for making tunnels to localhost

                    📦 Available Assets for bore
┏━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Asset ID ┃ Filename                                        ┃ Size (MB) ┃ Downloads ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 1        │ bore-v0.4.0-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz    │ 1.2       │ 1523      │
│ 2        │ bore-v0.4.0-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.rpm        │ 1.3       │ 845       │
│ 3        │ bore-v0.4.0-aarch64-unknown-linux-musl.deb      │ 1.1       │ 234       │
│ 4        │ bore-v0.4.0-x86_64-apple-darwin.dmg             │ 1.2       │ 456       │
│ 5        │ bore-v0.4.0-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz          │ 1.2       │ 1523      │
└──────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────┴───────────┘

                              🚀 Install: bore
┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name ┃ Selected Item                            ┃ Version ┃ Size Mb ┃ Downloads ┃
┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ bore │ bore-v0.4.0-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl... │ v0.4.0  │ 1.2     │ 1523      │
└──────┴──────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴───────────┘

Path: /home/noobi/bin
Install selected tool? [Y/n/ Asset ID]: 3

The tool will automatically parse the selected filename into keywords and store them for future upgrades.

Method 2: Command-line Flag

You can also specify the release file name directly using the -f / --file flag:

❯ ir get [GITHUB-URL or GITLAB-URL] -f [release asset filename]

Example: Installing the bore tool from GitHub with the release file name bore-v0.4.0-arm-unknown-linux-musleabi.tar.gz. Here, the keywords generated are: bore, v0.4.0, arm, linux, musleabi

❯ ir get https://github.com/ekzhang/bore -f bore-v0.4.0-arm-unknown-linux-musleabi.tar.gz

How it works:

• The tool parses the release file name into keywords (removing version numbers and file extensions)
• These keywords are stored in the state file to match the correct release file during future tool upgrades
• This ensures consistent upgrades to the same release variant

Note: If install-release fails to identify the correct release package for your system, please raise a GitHub issue to help improve the tool.

List installed tools 📋

❯ ir ls

                       Installed tools
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name      ┃ Version ┃ Url                                  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ terrascan │ v1.15.2 │ https://github.com/tenable/terrascan │
│ gron      │ v0.7.1  │ https://github.com/tomnomnom/gron    │
│ kubectx   │ v0.9.4  │ https://github.com/ahmetb/kubectx    │
└───────────┴─────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘

Remove installed release ❌

# Remove installed release

❯ ir rm gron

INFO     Removed: gron

Update all previously installed tools to the latest version 🕶

❯ ir upgrade

Fetching: https://github.com/tenable/terrascan#terrascan
Fetching: https://github.com/ahmetb/kubectx#kubectx

Following tools will be upgraded:

terrascan

Upgrade these tools (Y/n): y

Updating: terrascan, v1.15.0 => v1.15.2
 INFO     Downloaded: 'terrascan_1.15.2_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz' at /tmp/dn_terrascan_0as71a6v
 INFO     install /tmp/dn_terrascan_0as71a6v/terrascan ~/bin/terrascan
 INFO     Installed: terrascan

Progress... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100% 0:00:00

Update installed system packages 📦

If you have tools installed as packages (deb/rpm/appimage), ir upgrade will inform you if updates are available but will not install them. To upgrade packages, run:

❯ ir upgrade --pkg

This will prompt for sudo permissions to upgrade the system packages.

Pull state templates for installing tools 📄

You can push your state to somewhere like GitHub and use it on any other device to sync the tools installed via ir.

❯ ir pull --url https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Rishang/dotFiles/main/templates/install-release/state.json

Hold Update to specific installed tool ✋

In case you want to hold an update for a specific tool, you can use the hold {tool-name} command which will pause updates for that tool.

Example: Keep tool named k9s update on hold:

❯ ir hold k9s
 INFO     Update on hold for, k9s to True

You can list tools on hold updates by using the ls --hold command:

❯ ir ls --hold
             Installed tools kept on hold
┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name ┃ Version ┃ Url                               ┃
┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ k9s  │ v0.26.7 │ https://github.com/derailed/k9s   │
└──────┴─────────┴───────────────────────────────────┘

In case you want to remove the update hold for a specific tool, you can use the hold --unset {tool-name} command:

❯ ir hold --unset k9s
 INFO     Update on hold for, k9s to False

Configure tool installation path

❯ ir config --path ~/.local/bin

INFO   Updated path to:  ~/.local/bin
INFO   Done

Configure updates for pre-release versions 🔌

This is useful when you want to install pre-release versions of tools like beta or alpha releases. By default, it is set to False, in which case it will only check for the latest stable release.

❯ ir config --pre-release

Configure GitHub/GitLab tokens for higher rate limit 🔑

For GitHub:

❯ ir config --github-token [your github token]

INFO: Updated GitHub token
INFO: Done.

For GitLab:

❯ ir config --gitlab-token [your gitlab token]

INFO: Updated GitLab token
INFO: Done.