git export from github remote repository

Question

I\'d like to export from github remote repository, not cloning it. Similar to svn export, I do not want to get .git folder with it. I can work around it by cloning and remov

Answer 1

If you're only interested in exporting from GitHub then they provide a mechanism to download tarballs. For example:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/downloads

Even though it says "there aren't any downloads for this repository." you can still use the buttons to download a tarball of the master branch.

Or see this link for a list of tarballs linked to tags:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tags

This should work for any GitHub repo, not just the linux kernel.

Answer 2

If you need this for named commits (that is branches and tags), then you can use git clone --depth=1 combined with git archive

It is worth knowing that git clone --depth=1 clones all top commits on all branches and tags (not only master). So after doing such a shallow clone you can enter the local directory and make a git archive --format=tar tag_to_be_exported.

So if you want to export the tag release1.1

git clone --depth=1 git@github.com:xxx/yyy.git
cd yyy
git archive --format=tar release1.1 -o release1.1.tar

So unnless you need to export unnamed commit-ids, this may be a good solution.

Answer 3

If you need to get a tarball of a commit on github I think this is the easiest way:

Say your repository name is https://github.com/arielgabizon/librustzcash

and the commit id is 4be41ca6160c16abfd983c8c878b6ea04105b224

Just go in your browser to the address https://github.com/arielgabizon/librustzcash/archive/4be41ca6160c16abfd983c8c878b6ea04105b224.tar.gz

and, at least on google chrome, it will start downloading the file.

Answer 4

I think it is not possible to export github repository with git archive. Please read this

https://help.github.com/articles/can-i-archive-a-repository

Only possible ways are

git clone  
github download (ZIP) button   

Answer 5

For unknown (to me at least) reasons GitHub doesn't support this.

We don’t support people running git-archive against our servers.

Seems silly, since via SVN you can, but... I upvoted @Janos' answer.

Answer 6

I ran into this same problem before, and AFAICT, it only seems to work with Bitbucket, e.g.

ysim:~/repos$ git archive --format=tar --prefix=alembic/ --remote=ssh://git@bitbucket.org/zzzeek/alembic.git master | tar -xf -
ysim:~/repos$ ls
alembic

But I found a workaround for GitHub using wget - so in the new GitHub interface, you'll find a button that says "Download ZIP" on the bottom of the right sidebar; right-click on it and copy the link address.

Next, in the command line (I got the idea from here):

wget -qO- -O tmp.zip <zipball url> && unzip tmp.zip && rm tmp.zip

That will unzip it to a directory called something like repo-master/.

If you want, you can also alias this in your .gitconfig so you don't have to remember/type all of that out, e.g.

export = "! f() { wget -qO- -O tmp.zip \"$1\" && unzip tmp.zip && rm tmp.zip; }; f"

So you can just do something like this in the shell:

ysim:~/repos$ git export https://github.com/ysim/verbinski/archive/master.zip
ysim:~/repos$ ls
verbinski-master