diff --git a/fvcore/common/download.py b/fvcore/common/download.py
index f079a8b..bbb2230 100644
--- a/fvcore/common/download.py
+++ b/fvcore/common/download.py
@@ -7,6 +7,48 @@
 from urllib import request
 
 
+def dump_url_to_file(
+    url: str, filepath: str, progress: bool = True, desc: str = None
+) -> str:
+    """
+    Download a file from a given URL to a directory. If file exists, will
+        overwrite the existing file.
+
+    Args:
+        url (str):
+        filepath (str): the path to save the file.
+            The directory is assumed to already exist.
+        progress (bool): whether to use tqdm to draw a progress bar.
+        desc (bool): desc to pass to tqdm if drawing a progress bar.
+
+    Returns:
+        filepath (str): the path to the downloaded file.
+            This is always identical to the filepath argument.
+    """
+    if progress:
+        import tqdm
+
+        def hook(t: tqdm.tqdm) -> Callable[[int, int, Optional[int]], None]:
+            last_b: List[int] = [0]
+
+            def inner(b: int, bsize: int, tsize: Optional[int] = None) -> None:
+                if tsize is not None:
+                    t.total = tsize
+                t.update((b - last_b[0]) * bsize)  # type: ignore
+                last_b[0] = b
+
+            return inner
+
+        with tqdm.tqdm(  # type: ignore
+            unit="B", unit_scale=True, miniters=1, desc=desc, leave=True
+        ) as t:
+            tmp, _ = request.urlretrieve(url, filename=filepath, reporthook=hook(t))
+
+    else:
+        tmp, _ = request.urlretrieve(url, filename=filepath)
+    return tmp
+
+
 def download(
     url: str, dir: str, *, filename: Optional[str] = None, progress: bool = True
 ) -> str:
@@ -38,27 +80,7 @@ def download(
     tmp = fpath + ".tmp"  # download to a tmp file first, to be more atomic.
     try:
         logger.info("Downloading from {} ...".format(url))
-        if progress:
-            import tqdm
-
-            def hook(t: tqdm.tqdm) -> Callable[[int, int, Optional[int]], None]:
-                last_b: List[int] = [0]
-
-                def inner(b: int, bsize: int, tsize: Optional[int] = None) -> None:
-                    if tsize is not None:
-                        t.total = tsize
-                    t.update((b - last_b[0]) * bsize)  # type: ignore
-                    last_b[0] = b
-
-                return inner
-
-            with tqdm.tqdm(  # type: ignore
-                unit="B", unit_scale=True, miniters=1, desc=filename, leave=True
-            ) as t:
-                tmp, _ = request.urlretrieve(url, filename=tmp, reporthook=hook(t))
-
-        else:
-            tmp, _ = request.urlretrieve(url, filename=tmp)
+        tmp = dump_url_to_file(url, filepath=tmp, progress=progress, desc=filename)
         statinfo = os.stat(tmp)
         size = statinfo.st_size
         if size == 0: