archive: implement configurable tar filters

It's common to pipe the tar output produce by "git archive"
through gzip or some other compressor. Locally, this can
easily be done by using a shell pipe. When requesting a
remote archive, though, it cannot be done through the
upload-archive interface.

This patch allows configurable tar filters, so that one
could define a "tar.gz" format that automatically pipes tar
output through gzip.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 16 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/git-archive.txt b/Documentation/git-archive.txt
index 9c750e2444..726bf63d46 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-archive.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-archive.txt
@@ -101,6 +101,16 @@ tar.umask::
 	details.  If `--remote` is used then only the configuration of
 	the remote repository takes effect.
 
+tar.<format>.command::
+	This variable specifies a shell command through which the tar
+	output generated by `git archive` should be piped. The command
+	is executed using the shell with the generated tar file on its
+	standard input, and should produce the final output on its
+	standard output. Any compression-level options will be passed
+	to the command (e.g., "-9"). An output file with the same
+	extension as `<format>` will be use this format if no other
+	format is given.
+
 ATTRIBUTES
 ----------
 
@@ -149,6 +159,12 @@ git archive -o latest.zip HEAD::
 	commit on the current branch. Note that the output format is
 	inferred by the extension of the output file.
 
+git config tar.tar.xz.command "xz -c"::
+
+	Configure a "tar.xz" format for making LZMA-compressed tarfiles.
+	You can use it specifying `--format=tar.xz`, or by creating an
+	output file like `-o foo.tar.xz`.
+
 
 SEE ALSO
 --------