git-archive

git archive [--format=fmt] [--list] [--prefix=prefix/] [extra] [-o file] [options] tree-ish [path...]

git archive writes the contents of a tree into a tar or zip archive, without the .git directory or any other version control metadata. It is git's answer to "give me a clean copy of this revision as a file", and the standard way to produce release tarballs.Because it works from a tree-ish, you can archive any commit, branch or tag without checking it out, and without disturbing your working tree. Trailing path arguments limit the archive to those paths, so a single subdirectory can be extracted from a large repository.--prefix exists because archives that explode their contents into the current directory are considered rude. Passing --prefix=project-1.0/ gives the archive a single top-level directory, matching what people expect from a downloaded tarball.The commit ID is stored in the archive: for tar it goes in an extended pax header, and for zip in the file comment, so git get-tar-commit-id can recover which revision an archive was built from..gitattributes influences the result. Paths marked export-ignore are omitted, which is how repositories keep CI configuration and test fixtures out of release tarballs, and export-subst expands placeholders such as $Format:%H$ at archive time.

--format fmt

Archive format: tar (the default), zip, and, when the matching compressor is available, tar.gz, tgz and similar. If -o is given, the format is inferred from the filename extension.

List the available archive formats.

Write to file instead of standard output.

Prepend prefix to every path in the archive. The trailing slash matters.

Add an untracked file to the archive, at the root or under --prefix.

Add a file with the given literal content, without it existing on disk.

Also honour .gitattributes from the working tree, not just from the tree being archived.

Archive a tree from a remote repository instead of a local one.

Path to git-upload-archive on the remote. Used with --remote.

Report progress to standard error.

Compression level. -0 stores without compressing; -9 compresses hardest. For zip and the compressed tar formats.

Options passed through to the archive backend.

--remote requires the server to allow it. Many hosts, GitHub among them, disable git-upload-archive, so the command fails against them and you must clone or fetch instead.Only tracked content is archived. Untracked and ignored files never appear, which is usually what you want, but means an archive is not a snapshot of your working directory. --add-file is the escape hatch for injecting build artifacts.Archives are not bit-for-bit reproducible across git versions by default: the embedded commit ID, timestamps and the compressor's own output can all vary. Pin the git and compressor versions if you need reproducible release artifacts.The distinction between --format=tar.gz and piping through gzip matters for -9: the built-in format accepts a compression level, whereas a pipe needs the level passed to gzip itself.Submodule contents are not included; a submodule appears as an empty directory.

git archive was added in 2006, replacing the earlier git-tar-tree and git-zip-tree commands with a single front-end and a pluggable backend. Support for --add-file arrived in git 2.28 (2020), and --add-virtual-file in git 2.34 (2021).

git-bundle(1), git-checkout(1), git-clone(1), tar(1), zip(1), gzip(1)

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