Git: Archive

Original chapter reference: Chapter 34: Archive. The command options and documentation recipes below are fully transcribed from Git Notes for Professionals.

Parameter Details Format of the resulting archive: tar or zip. If this options is not given and the output --format=<fmt> file is specified, the format is inferred from the filename if possible. Otherwise, defaults to tar. -l, --list Show all available formats. -v, --verbose Report progress to stderr. --prefix=<prefix>/ Prepend <prefix>/ to each filename in the archive. -o <file>, --output=<file> Write the archive to <file> instead of stdout. --worktree-attributes Look for attributes in .gitattributes files in the working tree. This can be any options that the archiver backend understands. For zip backend, <extra> using -0 will store the files without deflating them, while -1 through -9 can be used to adjust compression speed and ratio. Retrieve a tar archive from a remote repository <repo> rather than the local --remote=<repo> repository. --exec=<git-upload-archive> Used with --remote to specify the path to the <git-upload-archive on the remote. <tree-ish> The tree or commit to produce an archive for. Without an optional parameter, all files and directories in the current working <path> directory are included in the archive. If one or more paths are specified, only these are included.

Section 34.1: Create an archive of git repository

With git archive it is possible to create compressed archives of a repository, for example for distributing releases.

Create a tar archive of current HEAD revision:

git archive --format tar HEAD | cat > archive-HEAD.tar

Create a tar archive of current HEAD revision with gzip compression:

git archive --format tar HEAD | gzip > archive-HEAD.tar.gz

This can also be done with (which will use the in-built tar.gz handling):

git archive --format tar.gz HEAD > archive-HEAD.tar.gz

Create a zip archive of current HEAD revision:

git archive --format zip HEAD > archive-HEAD.zip

Alternatively it is possible to just specify an output file with valid extension and the format and compression type will be inferred from it:

git archive --output=archive-HEAD.tar.gz HEAD

Section 34.2: Create an archive of git repository with directory prefix

It is considered good practice to use a prefix when creating git archives, so that extraction will place all files inside a directory. To create an archive of HEAD with a directory prefix:

git archive --output=archive-HEAD.zip --prefix=src-directory-name HEAD

When extracted all the files will be extracted inside a directory named src-directory-name in the current directory.

Section 34.3: Create archive of git repository based on specific branch, revision, tag or directory

It is also possible to create archives of other items than HEAD, such as branches, commits, tags, and directories.

To create an archive of a local branch dev:

git archive --output=archive-dev.zip --prefix=src-directory-name dev

To create an archive of a remote branch origin/dev:

git archive --output=archive-dev.zip --prefix=src-directory-name origin/dev

To create an archive of a tag v.01:

git archive --output=archive-v.01.zip --prefix=src-directory-name v.01

Create an archive of files inside a specific sub directory (sub-dir) of revision HEAD:

git archive zip --output=archive-sub-dir.zip --prefix=src-directory-name HEAD:sub-dir/