Compressing folder on aws instance creates a duplicate

I have a web app in this path

var/app/current

I use this command to zip everything including hidden files like htaccess

zip -r yourfile.zip * .*

It generates the zipped file which contains the web app files and folders in addition to a folder named current which contains another copy of the web app files and folders.

How can I compress web app files and folders including hidden files without including the directory named 'current' as a duplicate.

1 Answer

You may not use .*, because that shell glob will also match . and .. (current and parent directory), causing the behaviour you described.

But it isn't necessary anyway, you can just use the zip -r option on its own. Let me quote the manual page man zip:

 -r --recurse-paths Travel the directory structure recursively; for example: zip -r foo.zip foo or more concisely zip -r foo foo In this case, all the files and directories in foo are saved in a zip archive named foo.zip, including files with names starting with ".", since the recursion does not use the shell's file-name substitution mechanism. If you wish to include only a specific subset of the files in directory foo and its subdirectories, use the -i option to specify the pattern of files to be included. You should not use -r with the name ".*", since that matches ".." which will attempt to zip up the parent directory (proba‐ bly not what was intended). Multiple source directories are allowed as in zip -r foo foo1 foo2 which first zips up foo1 and then foo2, going down each direc‐ tory. [...]

So you just specify the folder you want to zip, like:

zip -r yourfile.zip /var/app/current

Or if your current directory already is /var/app/current, just:

zip -r yourfile.zip .