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Git archive

Download a single file using git archive

Using git archive to download a single file involves accessing a remote repository and piping the output to tar to extract a specific file.

breakdown

git archive --remote=<repository-url> HEAD:path/to/directory/filename | tar -x

  • git archive: create an archive (like a .tar or .zip file) of files from a named tree in the repository.

  • --remote=<repository-url>: create the archive from a remote repository at the URL

  • HEAD:path/to/directory/filename: specifies what to include in the archive. 

    • HEAD: the latest commit on the current branch. 
    • path/to/directory/filename: file path within that commit.

  • | tar -x : The output of git archive is piped (|) directly into the tar command. 
    tar -x extracts the files from the archive stream it receives from git archive.
    As soon as git archive creates the archive, tar extracts it without having to save and extract the archive.