info > GIT-ARCHIVE(1)

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📛 NAME

git-archive - Create an archive of files from a named tree

🚀 Quick Reference

📦 Use Case	Command	📝 Description
📁 Create tar of HEAD	git archive HEAD	Output tar archive of the current branch to stdout
🗜️ Tar with prefix + output file	git archive --prefix=proj/ -o proj.tar v1.0	Archive with directory prefix, written to a file
📦 Zip archive	git archive --format=zip -o latest.zip HEAD	Create a zip archive of the latest commit
📂 Archive subdirectory	git archive --prefix=docs/ HEAD:Documentation/ > docs.tar	Archive only the Documentation/ folder
🌐 Remote archive	git archive --remote=repo.git HEAD	Fetch archive from a remote repository
➕ Add untracked file	git archive --add-file=notes.txt HEAD > out.tar	Include a non‑tracked file in the archive
🗜️ Compressed tarball	git archive --format=tar.gz v1.0 > release.tar.gz	Use built‑in tar.gz handling

📋 SYNOPSIS

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

📖 DESCRIPTION

Creates an archive of the specified format containing the tree structure for the named tree, and writes it out to the standard output. If <prefix> is specified it is prepended to the filenames in the archive.

git archive behaves differently when given a tree ID versus when given a commit ID or tag ID. In the first case the current time is used as the modification time of each file in the archive. In the latter case the commit time as recorded in the referenced commit object is used instead. Additionally the commit ID is stored in a global extended pax header if the tar format is used; it can be extracted using git get-tar-commit-id. In ZIP files it is stored as a file comment.

⚙️ OPTIONS

🏷️ --format=<fmt>

Format of the resulting archive: tar or zip. If this option is not given, and the output file is specified, the format is inferred from the filename if possible (e.g. writing to "foo.zip" makes the output to be in the zip format). Otherwise the output format is tar.

📋 -l, --list

Show all available formats.

📢 -v, --verbose

Report progress to stderr.

📁 --prefix=<prefix>/

Prepend <prefix>/ to each filename in the archive.

📤 -o <file>, --output=<file>

Write the archive to <file> instead of stdout.

➕ --add-file=<file>

Add a non-tracked file to the archive. Can be repeated to add multiple files. The path of the file in the archive is built by concatenating the value for --prefix (if any) and the basename of <file>.

🌳 --worktree-attributes

Look for attributes in .gitattributes files in the working tree as well (see the section called ATTRIBUTES).

🔧 <extra>

This can be any options that the archiver backend understands. See next section.

🌐 --remote=<repo>

Instead of making a tar archive from the local repository, retrieve a tar archive from a remote repository. Note that the remote repository may place restrictions on which sha1 expressions may be allowed in <tree-ish>. See git-upload-archive(1) for details.

🔗 --exec=<git-upload-archive>

Used with --remote to specify the path to the git-upload-archive on the remote side.

🌲 <tree-ish>

The tree or commit to produce an archive for.

📂 <path>

Without an optional path parameter, all files and subdirectories of the current working directory are included in the archive. If one or more paths are specified, only these are included.

🔧 BACKEND EXTRA OPTIONS

📦 zip

-<digit> – Specify compression level. Larger values allow the command to spend more time to compress to smaller size. Supported values are from -0 (store-only) to -9 (best ratio). Default is -6 if not given.

🗜️ tar

-<number> – Specify compression level. The value will be passed to the compression command configured in tar.<format>.command. See manual page of the configured command for the list of supported levels and the default level if this option isn’t specified.

⚙️ CONFIGURATION

🛡️ tar.umask

This variable can be used to restrict the permission bits of tar archive entries. The default is 0002, which turns off the world write bit. The special value "user" indicates that the archiving user’s umask will be used instead. See umask(2) for details. If --remote is used then only the configuration of the remote repository takes effect.

📜 tar.<format>.command

This variable specifies a shell command through which the tar output generated by git archive should be piped. The command is executed using the shell with the generated tar file on its standard input, and should produce the final output on its standard output. Any compression-level options will be passed to the command (e.g., "-9"). An output file with the same extension as <format> will use this format if no other format is given.

The "tar.gz" and "tgz" formats are defined automatically and default to gzip -cn. You may override them with custom commands.

🌐 tar.<format>.remote

If true, enable <format> for use by remote clients via git-upload-archive(1). Defaults to false for user-defined formats, but true for the "tar.gz" and "tgz" formats.

🏷️ ATTRIBUTES

🚫 export-ignore

Files and directories with the attribute export-ignore won’t be added to archive files. See gitattributes(5) for details.

🔄 export-subst

If the attribute export-subst is set for a file then Git will expand several placeholders when adding this file to an archive. See gitattributes(5) for details.

Note that attributes are by default taken from the .gitattributes files in the tree that is being archived. If you want to tweak the way the output is generated after the fact (e.g. you committed without adding an appropriate export-ignore in its .gitattributes), adjust the checked out .gitattributes file as necessary and use --worktree-attributes option. Alternatively you can keep necessary attributes that should apply while archiving any tree in your $GIT_DIR/info/attributes file.

📚 EXAMPLES

Create a tar archive that contains the contents of the latest commit on the current branch, and extract it in the /var/tmp/junk directory:

git archive --format=tar --prefix=junk/ HEAD | (cd /var/tmp/ && tar xf -)

Create a compressed tarball for v1.4.0 release:

git archive --format=tar --prefix=git-1.4.0/ v1.4.0 | gzip >git-1.4.0.tar.gz

Same as above, but using the builtin tar.gz handling:

git archive --format=tar.gz --prefix=git-1.4.0/ v1.4.0 >git-1.4.0.tar.gz

Same as above, but the format is inferred from the output file:

git archive --prefix=git-1.4.0/ -o git-1.4.0.tar.gz v1.4.0

Create a compressed tarball for v1.4.0 release, but without a global extended pax header:

git archive --format=tar --prefix=git-1.4.0/ v1.4.0^{tree} | gzip >git-1.4.0.tar.gz

Put everything in the current head’s Documentation/ directory into git-1.4.0-docs.zip, with the prefix git-docs/:

git archive --format=zip --prefix=git-docs/ HEAD:Documentation/ > git-1.4.0-docs.zip

Create a Zip archive that contains the contents of the latest commit on the current branch. Note that the output format is inferred by the extension of the output file:

git archive -o latest.zip HEAD

Configure a "tar.xz" format for making LZMA-compressed tarfiles. You can use it specifying --format=tar.xz, or by creating an output file like -o foo.tar.xz:

git config tar.tar.xz.command "xz -c"

🔗 SEE ALSO

gitattributes(5)

🐙 GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

📛 NAME 🚀 Quick Reference 📋 SYNOPSIS 📖 DESCRIPTION ⚙️ OPTIONS 🔧 BACKEND EXTRA OPTIONS ⚙️ CONFIGURATION 🏷️ ATTRIBUTES 📚 EXAMPLES 🔗 SEE ALSO 🐙 GIT