tar - How can files be added to a tarfile with Python, without adding the directory hierarchy?

Question

When I invoke add() on a tarfile object with a file path, the file is added to the tarball with directory hierarchy associated. In other words, if I unzip the tarfile the directories in the original directories hierarchy are reproduced.

Is there a way to simply adding a plain file without directory info that untarring the resulting tarball produce a flat list of files?

Answer 1

Using the arcname argument of TarFile.add() method is an alternate and convenient way to match your destination.

Example: you want to archive a dir repo/a.git/ to a tar.gz file, but you rather want the tree root in the archive begins by a.git/ but not repo/a.git/, you can do like followings:

archive = tarfile.open("a.git.tar.gz", "w|gz")
archive.add("repo/a.git", arcname="a.git")
archive.close()