> The naive solution of simply backing up the entire file-system tree is clearly not desirable since that would clutter the backup with useless build artifacts.

> The naive solution of simply backing up the entire file-system tree is clearly not desirable since that would clutter the backup with useless build artifacts. `git rm -r --cached .` > One solution is to create a fresh clone (with --mirror), but that will typically consist of many small files which isn't ideal for backups, either. this is precisely what tar(1) was made for..