Is there any easy way to .zip up my source code with Visual Studio 2013?

Question

When playing around creating new Visual Studio projects to try out various technologies, or a weekend project, I want an easy way to zip up my source and not worry about .pdb, obj/bin files, etc.

So many years ago, I came up with a set of .bat files, one of which is: zipall.bat that looks like this:

del all.zip
pkzip -add -excl=Backup\* -path -rec all

Before running it, I would run another batch file: clean.bat that looks like this:

del/f/s/q *.aps        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.bsc        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.exp        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.idb        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.ilk        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.lib        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.ncb        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.obj        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.opt        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.pch        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.pdb        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.plg        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.sbr        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.suo        2>nul
del/f/s/q *.sdf        2>nul

del/f/s/q /ah *.suo        2>nul

del/f/s/q BuildLog.htm    2>nul

for /f "delims=;" %%i in ('dir "TempPE" /s/b /ad')         do rmdir /s/q "%%i"
for /f "delims=;" %%i in ('dir "obj" /s/b /ad')            do rmdir /s/q "%%i"
for /f "delims=;" %%i in ('dir "_ReSharper*" /s/b /ad')    do rmdir /s/q "%%i"
for /f "delims=;" %%i in ('dir "TestResults*" /s/b /ad')   do rmdir /s/q "%%i"

Periodically, I would have to update the list with extensions that newer tools introduced.

Incidentally, the reason for the "excl=Backup*" option in pkzip is so that I maintain backups of the zip files. backup.bat looks like this:

mkdir Backup 2>nul
if not exist all.zip goto :eof
set datex=%date:/=-%
set timex=%time::=-%
set filename="Backup\%datex% %timex%.zip"
copy all.zip %filename%

Since Visual Studio 2013 has Git built-in, I don't bother with the backups anymore.

When creating a new Project in Visual Studio 2013, if you specify "Create new Git repository", it will create a hidden .gitignore file which is way more exhaustive than my clean.bat. Is there a way to use that list with pkzip so that when zipping, it ignores the files in .gitignore?

Answer 1

The .gitignore file is created when you create a Visual Studio project with the "Create new Git repository" selected.

You don't need to use pkzip because Git has the archiving feature built-in.

Just type: git archive -o all.zip HEAD

and it will create all.zip of the latest source, without any of the stuff you don’t want in the .zip file like bin, obj, exes, nuget assemblies, etc.