Tar a folder without .git files

As camh points out, the previous command had a small problem in that given too many file names, it would execute more than once, with later invocations silently wiping out the previous runs. Since we're not compressing too, we can append instead of overwrite:

find mydir -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 tar Avf mydir.tar
find mydir -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec tar Avf mydir.tar {} +

Iocnarz's answer of using tar's --null and -T options works as well. If you have cpio installed, camh's answer using it is also fine. And if you have zsh and don't mind using it for a command, Gilles's answer using a zsh glob (*(.)) seems the most straightforward.

The key was the -maxdepth option. Final answer, dealing with spaces appropriately:

find mydir -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 tar cvf mydir.tar

This should also work:

find mydir -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec tar cvf mydir.tar {} +

If your pax supports the -0 option, with zsh:

print -rN dir/**/*(D/e:'reply=($REPLY/*(ND^/[1,10]))':) |
  pax -w0 | xz > file.tar.xz

It includes the first 10 non-directory files of each directory in the list sorted by file name. You can choose a different sorting order by adding the om glob qualifier (order by modification time, Om to reverse the order), oL (order by length), non (sort by name but numerically)...

If you don't have the standard pax command, or it doesn't support -0 but you have the GNU tar command, you can do:

print -rN -- dir/**/*(D/e:'reply=($REPLY/*(ND^/[1,10]))':) |
  tar --null -T - -cjf file.tar.xz

If you can't use zsh, but have access to bash (the shell of the GNU project), you could do:

find dir -type d -exec bash -O nullglob -O dotglob -c '
  for dir do
    set -- "$dir/*"; n=0
    for file do
      if [ ! -d "$file" ] || [ -L "$file" ]; then
        printf "%s\0" "$file"
        (( n++ < 10 )) || break
      fi
    done
  done' bash {} + | pax -0w | xz > file.tar.xz

That would be significantly less efficient though.