Exporting a Git Repository

Posted on 15 December 2011 in
Drupal git webdev

Have you ever needed or wanted to pull a remote Git Repository on Drupal.org down as a zip or tarball? You know, the way Github does? Most project releases have fairly recently built tarballs which is awesome - but Sandboxes do not (so it seems - please correct me if I'm wrong!).

The following snippet lets you "archive" a remote repository, pull it down as a tarball, and extract it in-place:

git archive --format=tar --prefix=PROJECT/ --remote=USERNAME@git.drupal.org:sandbox/USERNAME/123456789.git BRANCH | tar -xf -

Some important notes:

• The prefix is very important - without it, tar extracts to the current folder.
• The trailing slash on the prefix is equally important - without it all files have PROJECT at the beginning!
• The number (next to .git) references the sandbox Node ID.

I have tried using the "zip" format, however the unzip bash command doesn't accept stdin as a source. It looks like funzip might hold some promise thought…

EDIT: - looks like you can only do this if your user has access to the repository.