I tossed together a script (a zsh function in this case) to install the release version of hugo on my mac. This assumes things like you have a mac with jq installed, but it could be adapted to linux easily, and Windows with a little work (jq exists for Windows and linux).
A couple of points -
gets the dir you’re in when you run it, and dumps you back there on exit
gets the current release version of hugo via the github api, using jq, and deletes the v from that string using tr
assumes your environment is set up and you have a GOPATH var, and that that’s in your system path
makes a hugo-prev by copying the old symlink you have, so you can easily compare current to previous
unzips the downloaded tarball into a tmp folder then deletes that later
copies the downloaded hugo to a file with the version name in it, so you can reference it later if needed
It’s quick and dirty, but it might help someone at least get started automating a little.