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There are already some questions with answers how to download the ZIP file of GitHub repositories, but they don't work if the repository is private.

I know it should work with wget somehow since it does work with curl:

curl -u <USER> -L -o <FILENAME> https://github.com/<USER>/<REPO>/archive/master.zip

The above line will ask for <USER>'s password, download the master branch ZIP file and save it as <FILENAME>. However, the wget equivalent doesn't work:

wget --user=<USER> --ask-password --output-document=<FILENAME> https://github.com/<USER>/<REPO>/archive/master.zip

Results in ERROR 404: Not Found.

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  • Does adding --auth-no-challenge help?
    – wurtel
    Apr 29, 2019 at 9:02
  • Probably curl always sends the auth. However IMHO github is not behaving correctly by giving a 404 when not authenticated.
    – wurtel
    Apr 29, 2019 at 12:31

1 Answer 1

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It seems that github.com is not behaving politely by saying that the resource does not exist when a non-authenticated GET request is made. Normally wget will first try requesting the resource without authentication, and retry with that authentication data when a 401 Not Authenticated error is given.

This can be worked around by passing --auth-no-challenge so that wget sends the authentication data the first time.

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