Dirty hack to get gitlab archive download to use zip rather than tar.gz

gitlab-zip.rb

  def archive
    unless can?(current_user, :download_code, @project)
      render_404 and return
    end

    ref = params[:ref] || @project.root_ref
    commit = @project.commit(ref)
    render_404 and return unless commit

    # Build file path
    file_name = @project.code + "-" + commit.id.to_s + ".zip"
    storage_path = File.join(Rails.root, "tmp", "repositories", @project.code)
    file_path = File.join(storage_path, file_name)

    # Create file if not exists
    unless File.exists?(file_path)
      FileUtils.mkdir_p storage_path
      cmd = "git --git-dir='#{@project.path_to_repo}' archive --format=zip -o #{file_path} #{ref}"
      render_404 and return unless system(cmd)
    end

    # Send file to user
    send_file file_path
  end

Hi,
I tryed this out but sadly it does not work with my current version (2.7.0).
Got the following error: Cannot spawn application '/opt/gitlabhq': The spawn server has exited unexpectedly.
I installed gitlab by following this tutorial: http://blog.phusion.nl/2012/04/21/tutorial-setting-up-gitlab-on-debian-6/

Which version of gitlab are you using? Or do you know any better workarounds for zip downloads in gitlab?

Greetings, Xiphe.

Ah, thanks for letting me know. I'm on 2.6.2 right now. I haven't seen any better workarounds yet, although I'm sure there should be some.
Will test on 2.7 when I upgrade in a few weeks.

Cool, i'd love to know when you got that to work :)
I've been looking for other solutions the last 3 days and have not found anything but yours.
Sadly i have absolutely no experience with ruby so it'm not able to debug it or make any suggestions :(

Although this is like 2 years old, but there is an even quicker hack (as of GitLab 4.0.1) by editing archive_repo() in app/roles/repository.rb:

Change:
file_name = self.path + "-" + commit.id.to_s + ".tar.gz"
To:
file_name = self.path + "-" + commit.id.to_s + ".zip"

And change:
file = self.repo.archive_to_file(ref, prefix, file_path)
To:
file = self.repo.archive_to_file(ref, prefix, file_path, "zip", "cat")