git-tar
A simple script to tar up and compress a git repository for archival purposes. Typically used before attempting to tinker with the more arcane git commands which have the ability to open rabbit holes, thus spending hours researching how to undo an "Oops!"
This script taps into git's ability to be extended by placing an executuable version of git-tar in your PATH. Once this is in place git will treat it as a subcommand, meaning if you type this anywhere in a git repository:
git tar
the script will do the following:
-
Verify the presence of a $GITAR subdirectory for storing the tarballs.
-
Verify the presence of a list of exclusions in $GITAR/AAA_TarExcludes. This file will be created with commonly ignored extensions if it does not exist. One day I plan to make this smarter.
-
Locate the top of the repository and tar its contents into the $GITAR directory by building up a file name in the form of:
$GITAR/<repository_name>/<YYYYMMDD-hhmmss>.tar -
Finally, the tarball will be compressed using bzip2 by default, or xz if it is available on the system. This operation is performed in the background since it can sometimes be a rather lengthy process.
install
Simply clone and then add git-tar to a subdirectory that the shell searches for executables. Also make certain the file permissions are set to 0555 to ensure that it is executable.