git upload-archive

Streams a tarball back across the wire.

🎯 What & why

git upload-archive is the server-side counterpart of git archive --remote=.... It streams a tarball/zip of a tree back over the wire so clients can fetch a snapshot without cloning the whole repo.

🧠 Mental model

Same shape as upload-pack but for archives: client asks for a ref+format, server runs git archive and pipes the bytes back through the same transport (SSH or git://).

🛠️ Synopsis

git upload-archive <directory>

# Enable on git-daemon side
git config daemon.uploadarch true

# Client side that triggers it
git archive --remote=<url> --format=tar HEAD | tar x

🎚️ Switches & options

Flag	What it does
`<directory>`	The repository path the daemon/SSH wrapper passes in
`(none else)`	This is a transport endpoint — flags come from the client's `git archive` invocation
`daemon.uploadarch=true`	Required config on `git daemon` to allow this verb at all
`uploadArchive.allowUnreachable=true`	Permits archiving commits not on any branch (off by default)

💡 Use cases

Letting CI fetch a release snapshot without paying for a full clone
Distributing source tarballs straight from a self-hosted Git server
Pulling a single tagged tree from a large monorepo
Backing a 'download as tar.gz' button on an internal service

🧪 Examples

Enable on a daemon-hosted repo

git config daemon.uploadarch true

Client fetches a tarball over git://

git archive --remote=git://127.0.0.1/myrepo.git --format=tar v1.2.0 | tar x

Client over SSH (uses git-upload-archive transparently)

git archive --remote=git@127.0.0.1:myrepo.git --format=tar.gz HEAD > snap.tgz

Allow archiving an unreachable commit

git config uploadArchive.allowUnreachable true

🎓 Recommendations

Leave daemon.uploadarch off unless you actually want anonymous tarball downloads — it's off for a reason
Prefer signed tags as archive targets so consumers can verify what they got
If you need this often, put it behind HTTPS and a proper forge; raw git daemon has no auth

🪤 Common pitfalls

Forgetting daemon.uploadarch true and getting a confusing 'service not enabled' error
Assuming the archive includes submodules — it doesn't; only the superproject tree is packed
Enabling allowUnreachable and accidentally exposing dangling/secret commits that were never merged

🔗 Related modules

📝 Quiz

Hit each option, then Check answers. Score is recorded; Next is always open.