Archive Your Git Repo

Cross-posted from https://walkingriver.com/archive-your-git-repo/

Did you know there is a very simple and straightforward command to archive a complete Git repository, while including no historical information? In this brief article I explain both how and why I do it.

Why Archive Your Git Repo?

Every few weeks or so, I find myself needing to archive my Git repo. Often I do this to send code to someone who has no reason to access the repo directly. They just need a snapshot of the code, with no history information, because they won't be contributing to it.

I also provide a snapshot of my code for every module in my Pluralsight courses. Being able to archive my Git repo into a zip file is very handy.

For some reason, I can never remember how to do this, and find myself looking it up repeatedly. I decided to write about it here so that I could always find it when I need it. And just maybe it will help someone other than just me.

How to Do It

If you want to backup a Git repo, completely detaching it from Git, use one of the following variations of the git archive command:

Zip File

git archive --format zip --output /full/path/to/zipfile.zip master

Tar File:

git archive master > /some/other/path/my-repo.tar

Tar / Bzip:

git archive master | bzip2 > my-repo.tar.bz2

In each of these cases, the word master is the branch I am archiving. You can archive any branch you want, simply by replacing master with the name of your desired branch.

Though not strictly necessary, I like to create my archive from the root of my repo, and have my archive created outside of it.

Note: The archive will not contain the .git directory, but will contain other hidden git-specific files like .gitignore, .gitattributes, etc.

Reference

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/160608/do-a-git-export-like-svn-export