jq – a nifty JSON query utility to read values from a JSON file.įor macOS users, I recommend using Homebrew to install both wget and jq if you don’t already have them.

wget – a great utility to download files for a URL.

I’ve also assumed that wget and jq is already installed on your desktop or notebook. However, the commands used are not specific to macOS and therefore should work on Linux OS as well. I’ve written this Minecraft server update script on my macOS Catalina, and thus have tested it to work on macOS. As the default shell is now on zsh, I figured that I should try and write my own script from scratch and see how different zsh was from bash.Īnd thus this script ( link) here that I’ve uploaded to my git lab repository here. I run the Minecraft server on my MacBook that’s currently running on macOS Catalina. Scripting the update_server.sh script on macOS Catalina

The combination both of these json files makes it possible to programmatically download the latest release of Minecraft’s server.jar using a script. The version’s json file instead is where you would find the download URL. While this json file does not contain the direct download URLs of the binaries, it provides the url with all the details of each of the versions.

As I was looking for an easier way to download and update the Minecraft server.jar, I stumbled upon some scripts that pointed me to this version_manifest.json file that contains all the available versions of Minecraft.

Download minecraft jar