Asset Filtering

xget can narrow the assets it considers by using --asset and --ignore matchers. These filters operate before system detection and can be repeated multiple times.

Matching styles

--asset supports these forms:

  • Literal matcher: --asset .zip
  • Literal anti-match: --asset '^musl' or --asset 'not:musl'
  • Regex matcher: --asset '~^tool_.*\.zip$', --asset '=~^tool_.*\.zip$', or --asset 're:^tool_.*\.zip$'
  • Regex anti-match: --asset '^~.*\.sbom\.json$', --asset 'not:~.*\.sbom\.json$', or --asset 'not:re:.*\.sbom\.json$'

--ignore always excludes matches and accepts the same general matcher styles:

  • --ignore '.sbom.json'
  • --ignore '~\.zip\.sbom\.json$'
  • --ignore '=~\.zip\.sbom\.json$'
  • --ignore 're:\.zip\.sbom\.json$'
  • --ignore 'not:arm64' (inverted ignore; keeps only matches for arm64)

Patterns beginning with ~ are treated as regex. Patterns beginning with ^ are treated as negative by default. If you need a literal value that starts with either symbol, escape it or use text:.

Shell quoting caveat: always quote matchers that start with ~ (for example --ignore '~\.sha512$'). Unquoted, most shells — including PowerShell, bash, and zsh — expand a leading ~ to your home directory before xget ever sees the argument, silently turning your regex into an unrelated path and disabling the filter. Single quotes are safest since they also prevent $ from being treated as variable interpolation.

Examples:

xget tacocontent/ironstate --asset '~\.zip$' --ignore '~\.zip\.sbom\.json$'

xget --asset '~~literal-starts-with-tilde'
xget --asset '^^literal-starts-with-caret'
xget --asset 'text:~literal-starts-with-tilde'

Detection and matching behavior

  • --asset matchers are applied before system detection.
  • Literal matches prefer exact basename match, then substring match.
  • Negative forms use ^ or not:.
  • Regex forms use ~, =~, or re: prefixes.
  • Escaping rules allow literal matching for leading ~ and ^ characters.

This gives you a flexible way to choose assets like .zip variants, skip provenance files, or prefer only architecture-specific binaries.

Template Variables in Asset Filters / Ignore Lists

The asset_filters and ignore settings support template variables that are automatically replaced with the appropriate values based on your target system:

  • `` - Replaced with the target operating system (e.g., linux, darwin, windows)
  • `` - Replaced with the target architecture (e.g., amd64, arm64, 386)

The values are determined by:

  1. The --system flag if provided (e.g., --system linux/amd64)
  2. The system setting in the repository configuration
  3. The runtime system (detected automatically from your current OS/architecture)

Example:

["junegunn/fzf"]
asset_filters = ["_.tar.gz"]

"junegunn/fzf":
  asset_filters:
    - "_.tar.gz"

When running xget junegunn/fzf on a Linux AMD64 system, this will match assets containing linux_amd64.tar.gz. When running xget junegunn/fzf --system darwin/arm64, it will match assets containing darwin_arm64.tar.gz.

Template substitution only applies to asset_filters/ignore values read from the config file. Passing --asset or --ignore on the command line uses those values verbatim (no / substitution).

For more examples, see Usage and Configuration.