Can support install from github url

[ahaoboy]

Perhaps another tool could be developed based on cargo-binstall that could install the latest version of a program from a github url and the corresponding release page, but the two are very similar. Perhaps this installation method could support some private gitlab repositories?

cargo binstall https://github.com/awslabs/llrt
cargo binstall https://github.com/awslabs/llrt/releases

[ahaoboy]

This installation method can mainly install some non-rust programs, but they have similar release names rules as rust programs.

cargo binstall https://github.com/quickjs-ng/quickjs/releases

[NobodyXu]

Well cargo-bins-tall supports --git to install crates not released on crates.io and supports private github repositories as well.

We also support private cargo registry.

We haven't got support for gitlab yet or for non-rust crate, but I'd welcome any contribution and is willing to review them.

[ethanuppal]

If the crate is not on crates.io, cargo binstall fails. To reproduce:

• FAILS: cargo binstall --git https://github.com/oxalica/nil nil
• PASSES cargo install --git https://github.com/oxalica/nil nil

[ahaoboy]

There are some tools that can install binaries directly from the repo url

https://github.com/houseabsolute/ubi

https://github.com/zyedidia/eget

https://github.com/easy-install/easy-install

[NobodyXu]

The main problem is we don't know which version is the latest, I think we could solve this and get it working

[ethanuppal]

Yeah I'd really like to be able to use cargo binstall as a drop-in for cargo install everywhere

[NobodyXu]

Yeah I'd really like to be able to use cargo binstall as a drop-in for cargo install everywhere

There's a catch though, cargo install --git just build it from source, while binstall has to find pre-built

So to make it work,

• binstall could query GitHub for latest release
• binstall could use git sha to look for release which doesn't sound reasonable
• binstall can look for artifacts from github action, which is a bit hard

So I think query gh for latest release is the simplest and most reasonable to do

[ethanuppal]

I feel like it should just call cargo install --git on fallback

[benfrankel]

Yeah this seems like a bug. At the very least it's surprising behavior.

cargo binstall --git=https://github.com/foo/bar quux can't find an appropriate release, so as a fallback it runs cargo install quux. In my use case, the quux it finds on crates.io is actually a different crate than the one I'm trying to install from the github url, so cargo-binstall falls back to trying to install the wrong crate from source (and it fails because there's no matching version).

[ethanuppal]

This is a 100% a bug that makes it hard to use cargo binstall.

[NobodyXu]

The problem I was thinking is how we find the release artifacts

binstall could query GitHub based on version in Cargo.toml
binstall could use git sha to look for release which doesn't sound reasonable
binstall can look for artifacts from github action, which is a bit hard

I recon then first approach is probably the most reasonable one, simply skipping the crates.io lookup, and probably the simplest

[NobodyXu]

When checking the code, I've realized that I've already implemented this long ago.

Running cargo binstall --git https://github.com/oxalica/nil nil gives me @ethanuppal :

 INFO resolve: Resolving package: 'nil'
 INFO Cloning with worktree::receiving pack: Enumerating objects → 1.2K objects
 INFO ℹCloning with worktree::receiving pack::create index file::indexing → done 1.2K objects in 0.06s (20.0K objects/s)
 INFO ℹCloning with worktree::receiving pack::create index file::decompressing → done 2.7MB in 0.06s (44.9MB/s)
 INFO ℹCloning with worktree::receiving pack::create index file::Resolving → done 1.2K objects in 0.11s (10.7K objects/s)
 INFO ℹCloning with worktree::receiving pack::create index file::Decoding → done 7.5MB in 0.11s (67.9MB/s)
 INFO ✓Cloning with worktree::receiving pack::create index file::writing index file → done 34.2kB in 0.00s (100.1MB/s)
 INFO ✓Cloning with worktree::receiving pack::create index file → done 1.2K objects in 0.17s (7.0K objects/s)
 INFO ℹCloning with worktree::receiving pack::read pack → done 555.2kB in 0.19s (3.0MB/s)
 INFO ℹCloning with worktree::receiving pack::checkout → done 191.0 files in 0.03s (6.8K files/s)
 INFO ℹCloning with worktree::receiving pack::writing → done 1.5MB in 0.03s (54.3MB/s)
 WARN Package does not specify repository, cargo-binstall cannot provide default pkg_url for it.
Please ask the upstream to provide it for target aarch64-apple-darwin.
 WARN Package does not specify repository, cargo-binstall cannot provide default pkg_url for it.
Please ask the upstream to provide it for target universal-apple-darwin.
 WARN Package does not specify repository, cargo-binstall cannot provide default pkg_url for it.
Please ask the upstream to provide it for target universal2-apple-darwin.
 WARN Package does not specify repository, cargo-binstall cannot provide default pkg_url for it.
Please ask the upstream to provide it for target x86_64-apple-darwin.
 WARN The package nil v0.0.0 will be installed from source (with cargo)
Do you wish to continue? [yes]/no
? yes^C WARN Installation cancelled