[BUG] git archive broken in 1.7.8.1

CC me on answers since i'm not subscribed to the list

Hi, one of our [KDE] anongit servers was updated to 1.7.8.1 and not the syntax

git archive --remote=git://anongit.kde.org/repo.git HEAD:path

does not seem to return a valid tar archive anymore when it did work 
previously. In fact the man page of my version has that syntax in one of the 
examples.

Is that a regression or should have never it worked and the current behaviour 
is the correct one?

Albert