I think less likely. Svn actually had an `export` command, which allowed you to do a checkout of a specific commit with no svn metadata. If someone was actually using svn for deployment, they likely knew about it. (http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/svn.ref.svn.c.export.html)
No, archive is very different. `svn export` could be used at the target side. Basically you can export from remote repository to the chosen directory without any extra operations, so .svn is never created.
`git archive` requires you to have a clone of the repo from which you can create an archive. That means people are more likely to just do a local checkout than play with archive on top of it.
Deploy with svn export:
svn export url.of.repo destination/path
Deploy with git archive:
git clone url.of.repo
cd repo_name
git archive --format=tar some_commit_or_branch | (cd destination/path && tar -xf -)
I completely agree, every time I do a new deployment script for git, I miss the old svn export command, I hate the idea of cloning on the deployment machine, having to git sync in the script etc. Whereas 'svn export' feels stateless, and is clean by construction.
