TIL: Creating Tarballs With tar for Deployment Packages

Deploying a project means sending files to a server. tar bundles them into a single archive with permissions, structure, and metadata intact.

tar -czf deploy.tar.gz dist/ node_modules/ package.json

-c creates the archive, -z compresses with gzip, -f specifies the output filename. List which directories and files to include at the end.

tar -xzf deploy.tar.gz

On the server, extract with -x. The directory structure reconstructs exactly as it was.

tar -tf deploy.tar.gz

List the contents of a tarball without extracting it. Handy for checking what a build artifact actually contains before shipping it somewhere.

Should I include node_modules in the tarball?

Do a fresh npm install on the server instead. Most deployment platforms handle this automatically. tar is for the code you wrote, not the dependencies you installed.