Export Git Project

Jun 21, 2016 git phpstorm

This post is more than 18 months old. Since technology changes too rapidly, this content may be out of date (but that's not always the case). Please remember to verify any technical or programming information with the current release.

I manage any WordPress plugins I create using git. In order to create a distribution of those, I need to zip up the source code and use that to upload to the marketplace (or directly upload). This was easy with SVN - I just used an svn export command and there we go.

Turns out there’s a git command called git archive which works basically the same way. However, the cool thing about this is that it offers a built in ability to zip the file. Either use the --format command line argument or just name your output path with .tar or .zip - and it’ll do the proper compression for you.

For example:

cd my-plugin-with-git && git archive -o my-plugin.zip HEAD

This will make a zip file of all your code, minus the .git folder, in the current working directory. Use that to upload your plugin.

Bonus Tip

In PHPStorm, you can add this as an external command easily. Do the following steps:

Go to the settings/preferences pane
Go to Tools > External Tools
Click the + sign to add a new command
Fill in the fields as you see fit - but the important ones are:
- Program: git
- Parameters: Archive - $ProjectName$.zip HEAD
- Working Directory: $ProjectFileDir$

This will give you an option to right-click on the project and choose your external tool from the External Tools > Your Item Name menu to create a zip archive in the root of your project.