Using Wget to Download a File From a Page That Uses Redirection To Initialize Download

Question

I was writing a script with wget that tried to download the latest version of blender available on blenders home page to try to automate downloading the latest version. I ran into a problem with wget though. If you continue through the webpage to the download page of your desired version, there seems to be a redirection request (or something like it) that gives you a mirror to the most appropriate download for you location. I tried using curl -L -O to try to follow that redirection, but it didn't seem to do what I wanted it to.

Is there a way to handle this using wget? My current ideal script would navigate from the blender home page every time without any hard links to specific versions.

Answer 1

I can't recall where I found the original version of this script, which referenced builder.blender.org (that is, nightly builds for 2.80), but fortunately it turns out there's a download subdomain. Try this:

export BLENDER_VERSION=2.80

wget -P /tmp/ -r --no-parent -A 'blender-'$BLENDER_VERSION'-linux-*-x86_64.tar.bz2' https://download.blender.org/release/Blender${BLENDER_VERSION}/ \
    && mkdir -p /blender \
    && tar -xvjf /tmp/download.blender.org/release/Blender${BLENDER_VERSION}/blender-*-x86_64.tar.bz2 --strip 1 -C /blender \
    && ln -sf /blender/blender /usr/bin/blender \
    && rm -rf /tmp/download.blender.org/

This is a direct download, not from one of the mirrors, so will be slow, but at least is automatable.

(Discovered by way of looking at how to download past versions)