Answer by Atif for Command line zip everything within a directory, but do not include any directory as the root

Install zip

sudo apt install zip

use zip

zip -r foo.zip .

You can use the flags -0 (none) to -9 (best) to change compressionrate

Excluding files can be done via the -x flag. From the man-page:

-x files--exclude files          Explicitly exclude the specified files, as in:                 zip -r foo foo -x \*.o          which  will  include the contents of foo in foo.zip while excluding all the files that end in .o.  The backslash avoids the shell filename substitution, so that the name matching          is performed by zip at all directory levels.          Also possible:                 zip -r foo foo -x@exclude.lst          which will include the contents of foo in foo.zip while excluding all the files that match the patterns in the file exclude.lst.          The long option forms of the above are                 zip -r foo foo --exclude \*.o          and                 zip -r foo foo --exclude @exclude.lst          Multiple patterns can be specified, as in:                 zip -r foo foo -x \*.o \*.c          If there is no space between -x and the pattern, just one value is assumed (no list):                 zip -r foo foo -x\*.o          See -i for more on include and exclude.