Create a Repository Archive with git

By  on  

Everything about git is amazing. And by "everything", I mean almost everything. As someone that used Perforce and SVN before learning git, I'm willing to ignore a few git annoyances since it makes branching and many other simple tasks easier. One good problem I have with git is that it's so powerful I don't know all of its features.

One feature I recently found out about is its archive feature which allows for exporting an entire repository to a zip or tar file.

# Format:  git archive {branchname} --format={compression} --output={filename}
git archive master --format=tar --output=kuma.tar

git archive some-feature-branch --format=tar --output=kuma.tar

Sure you could use any archiving utility to archive a given repo, this feature allows for quick archiving of any branch or repository state!

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

  • By
    Camera and Video Control with HTML5

    Client-side APIs on mobile and desktop devices are quickly providing the same APIs.  Of course our mobile devices got access to some of these APIs first, but those APIs are slowly making their way to the desktop.  One of those APIs is the getUserMedia API...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    9 Mind-Blowing Canvas Demos

    The <canvas> element has been a revelation for the visual experts among our ranks.  Canvas provides the means for incredible and efficient animations with the added bonus of no Flash; these developers can flash their awesome JavaScript skills instead.  Here are nine unbelievable canvas demos that...

  • By
    Resize an Image Using Canvas, Drag and Drop and the File API

    Recently I was asked to create a user interface that allows someone to upload an image to a server (among other things) so that it could be used in the various web sites my company provides to its clients. Normally this would be an easy task—create a...

Discussion

  1. Andreas Krey

    The title is misleading, git archive only puts the tree of a single commit into the .tar file, not the entire branch’s history. Useful for creating a tar file to release a version.

    git bundle is what should be under this heading.

    • Kyll

      Hey, wouldn’t that make another nice entry?

  2. csibar

    Just a small correction: --format does not mean compression. It is – well – just the format of the archive, but it is not compressed at all.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!