Exporting a tree from a repository

    Hello all!

    I am a new GIT user, I like it, so I started playing with it for
different projects I work on.

    Currently I am playing with "Linux from Scratch", and I have
written some scripts to automatize the build process -- kind of
install scripts...

    For this I use GIT to store all the source packages -- each inside
it's own branch :).

    My question is the following: How can I export an entire tree
without using a working directory, or cloning the repository. (Because
from what I have seen so far there is no way to use the same
repository with many working directories...)

    Now I know that I can use "git archive | tar -x"... I am looking
for the same functionality but without the intermediary file... Maybe
something like "git archive --format=tree <branch>"...

    Also there is also a possible drawback by using git archive with
tar format, that is if I decide to make the repository available to
the public then it would be nice to have this export functionality...
I think this could be also used for kernel sources as an alternative
to downloading the tar.bz2 file or copying the entire tree...

    Thank you all for your feedback!
    Ciprian Craciun.

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007, Ciprian Dorin Craciun wrote:

You can have as many working directories as you want from one repository using the git-new-workdir script from contrib/workdir. You do need to be careful when updating references though (you basically want to avoid updating a reference that you are using in another working directory).

You should also be able to use this to get an "export" - simply create the new workdir and then remove the .git (being careful not to accidentally do this in your actual repository). However I expect there is a better way to do this ...

Julian Phillips <julian@quantumfyre.co.uk> writes:

You meant "git-archive" perhaps.

On 7/15/07, Julian Phillips <julian@quantumfyre.co.uk> wrote:

    Thank you for the hint about git-new-workdir! I will try it.

    Now for the export thing... I know that I can just clone the
remote repository and then remove the .git folder, but for my purpose
I just want to have the HEAD tree downloaded, without any history...
And by using git clone I end up downloading much more than I actually
need.

    I am looking for a feature like 'svn export <repo+tree_path>
<destination_path>'...

    Ciprian.

Ciprian Dorin Craciun, Sun, Jul 15, 2007 09:12:08 +0200:

Well, if you have a ssh access to remote repository, you can run git-archive there:

    $ ssh -n 'cd /dir/repo/.git && git --bare archive --prefix=<local-path> <tree>' |tar xf -

or even simplier:

    $ git archive --remote=<remote-host:remote-path> --prefix=<local-path>/ <tree> |tar xf -

(for whatever reason it does not work with just git-daemon).

also sprach Ciprian Dorin Craciun <ciprian.craciun@gmail.com> [2007.07.14.2225 +0200]:

There is no intermediary file.