Two formats, two purposes

git archive produces a tar or zip snapshot of a tree — code without history, perfect for releases. git bundle produces a portable transport file containing objects and refs — perfect for offline transfer of an entire repo or update.

Archive examples

git archive --format=tar.gz -o release-1.0.tar.gz v1.0.0
git archive --format=zip --prefix=myapp-1.0/ -o myapp-1.0.zip HEAD
git archive --format=tar HEAD src/ | tar -xC /tmp/snapshot

--prefix wraps the contents in a top-level directory, so extraction does not splatter into the current dir.

Excluding files from archives

Use .gitattributes:

tests/      export-ignore
.github/    export-ignore
*.dev.json  export-ignore

And substitute placeholders into a release file with export-subst. See "Gitattributes: line endings, exports, and encoding".

Bundle for offline transfer

git bundle create repo.bundle --all
git bundle create incr.bundle main ^origin/main     # only new commits
git bundle verify repo.bundle
git clone repo.bundle myrepo                        # clone from bundle
git fetch repo.bundle main:imported                 # fetch into existing

Bundles let you sneakernet repository updates across air-gapped networks.

Use case: ship to embargoed customer

Generate a bundle of the release branch and email or sftp it. The customer fetches from the bundle into their clone:

git bundle create v1.2.bundle main --tags
git fetch v1.2.bundle '+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/upstream/*' '+refs/tags/*:refs/tags/*'

Reproducible archives

Default git archive embeds the commit time. For bit-identical builds across machines, set:

git archive --format=tar.gz \
  --output=src.tar.gz \
  --prefix=src/ HEAD
# or use git's reproducible flags + GNU tar --sort=name --mtime=...

Common mistakes

Confusing git archive (no history) with git bundle (full history). Forgetting --prefix producing a "tarbomb." Generating bundles missing prerequisites: an incremental bundle requires the receiver to have the negation point's history, or the bundle is unusable.

Related

See "Gitattributes: line endings, exports, and encoding" and "Ahead-of-time packfile building with git fast-export".