Using Git to create an archive of changed files

I'm using this answer in that case that tells me to

tar czf changed-files.tar.gz `git diff --name-only [diff options]`

For example, to create an archive containing the files changed in the last four revisions, I'd do

tar czf changed-files.tar.gz `git diff --name-only HEAD~4..`

This assumes – of course – that HEAD~4 does actually exist.

You just need to filter out files deleted while that diff to fix that error:

git archive -o update.zip HEAD $(git diff --name-only --diff-filter=d HEAD^..HEAD)

May be git archive is overhead for that task and you should use @eckes's answer.
But, you still should add --diff-filter=d to exclude removed files from archive.

I use this alias to include new files not in HEAD:

alias gittar='tar -czvf working-files.tgz \
              $(git status -s | sed -r "s/..(.*)/\1 /")'