git archive

Like a .tar.gz of any commit, no .git inside.

🎯 What & why

Export a tree-ish (commit, tag, branch) as a tar or zip archive. Like tar -cf but pulled from the object DB, with no .git/ inside.

🧠 Mental model

Archive walks the tree object at the chosen ref, streams each blob through the configured filters (text, export-subst, etc.), and writes a tar/zip stream. Nothing in the working tree or index matters — it's a pure object-DB read.

🛠️ Synopsis

git archive [--format=<fmt>] [--list] [--prefix=<prefix>/] [<extra>]
            [-o | --output=<file>] [--worktree-attributes]
            [--remote=<repo> [--exec=<git-upload-archive>]] <tree-ish>
            [<path>...]

🎚️ Switches & options

Flag	What it does
`--format=tar\|zip\|tar.gz`	Output format.
`--prefix=<dir>/`	Prepend a directory inside the archive.
`-o <file>`	Write to file instead of stdout.
`--remote=<repo>`	Archive a remote repo without cloning (uses upload-archive).

💡 Use cases

Producing release tarballs.
Snapshotting code for offline distribution.
Submitting source archives without .git/ history.

🧪 Examples

Archive HEAD as a tar.

$ git archive --format=tar HEAD > release.tar

Tarball with prefix dir.

$ git archive --format=tar.gz --prefix=proj-1.2/ v1.2 -o proj-1.2.tar.gz

Archive only one directory.

$ git archive HEAD docs/ > docs.tar

🎓 Recommendations

Use --prefix so the archive extracts into a named subdirectory, not the current dir.
Use annotated tags as the source for reproducible release builds.