git archive export with submodules (git archive all / recursive)

If you are a friend of KISS as me you could use the answer of @t-b BUT as I found this solution does not archive nested submodules. The following code will help

# archive main directory
$ git archive --format tar -o release.tar HEAD
# descend recursively and archive each submodule
$ git submodule --quiet foreach --recursive 'git archive --format tar --prefix=$displaypath/ -o submodule.tar HEAD'
# concatenate with main archive
$ TOPDIR=$(pwd) git submodule --quiet foreach --recursive 'cd $TOPDIR; tar --concatenate --file=release.tar $displaypath/submodule.tar; rm -fv $displaypath/submodule.tar'
$ gzip -9 release.tar

The result will be file result.tar.gz... instead of HEAD you could choose another commit, of course.

https://github.com/Kentzo/git-archive-all is now working under linux as @Kentzo stated.

In the cygwin environment (with git and python installed via cygwin installer) it works there too.

I'm using the following code

git archive -o release.zip HEAD
git submodule --quiet foreach 'cd $toplevel; zip -ru release.zip $sm_path'

to create a complete archive of a git repository with all submodules.

If you want to be fancy you can even rewrite the zip comment via

echo -e "Repository:\n$(git rev-parse HEAD)\nSubmodule status:\n$(git submodule status)" | zip -u release.zip -z

All on windows using infozip.