Is there a way to get the latest tag of a given repo using github API v3

Question

I am relatively new to the github api and I am struggling to get the latest tag of a given repo.

Q: Why I need that ?

A:

Answer 1

You could consider, as an alternative to the GitHub API, a simple script mentioned in "Is there a simple way to “git describe” a remote repository?" (source, by svnpenn):

#!/usr/bin/awk -f
BEGIN {
  if (ARGC != 2) {
    print "git-describe-remote.awk https://github.com/stedolan/jq"
    exit
  }
  FS = "[ /^]+"
  while ("git ls-remote " ARGV[1] "| sort -Vk2" | getline) {
    if (!sha)
      sha = substr($0, 1, 7)
    tag = $3
  }
  while ("curl -s " ARGV[1] "/releases/tag/" tag | getline)
    if ($3 ~ "commits")
      com = $2
  printf com ? "%s-%s-g%s\n" : "%s\n", tag, com, sha
}

That does extract the tag (and more), without having to clone the repo.

Note: as commented below by Joels Elf, make sure /usr/bin/awk refers to gawk, not mawk.