Spotted while browsing the sabre/xml repository, git has a built-in function to archive a given repository with various options.

That by itself doesn't seem so interesting, however:

• can archive the repo from any tree/commit
• can retrieve remote repositories archives (via --remote=<repo>)
• respects the .gitattributes files, including export-ignore to not export some files/paths

Source:

• [1] https://git-scm.com/docs/git-archive