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From git-clone(1) Manual Page

--branch can also take tags and detaches the HEAD at that commit in the resulting repository.

I tried 

git clone --branch <tag_name> <repo_url>

But it does not work. It returns: 

warning: Remote branch 2.13.0 not found in upstream origin, using HEAD instead

How to use this parameter?

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4
  • 2
    possible duplicate of Download a specific tag with Git Commented Oct 1, 2014 at 16:30
  • 5
    You're right, but little difference. When I ask this question, in my situation, I needed to do this in one line and must use clone, and I was stuck at 'why --branch doesn't work'. The best answer of that url used clone->checkout, which cannot resolve my question. :) Commented Oct 8, 2014 at 8:35
  • 3
    Not sure if the problem persists after five months, but most likely, the tag is not 2.13.0 but v2.13.0. Been there, done that. Commented Apr 29, 2022 at 8:54
  • There's some good advice in the answers for the similar question linked by @VictorSergienko: stackoverflow.com/questions/791959/… Commented Apr 13, 2023 at 7:13

7 Answers 7

Reset to default
1051 
git clone --depth 1 --branch <tag_name> <repo_url>

--depth 1 is optional but if you only need the state at that one revision, you probably want to skip downloading all the history up to that revision.

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5 Comments

Note if the ref is ambiguous and you have a branch and a tag named the same thing, this will prefer the branch.
without the optional --depth 1 this is exactly the same as OPs or do i miss something?
@463035818 Seems the same, might be OP did not really have any 2.13.0 tag on remote.
But tags are not branches. How do you get a specific tag?
@Melab, from a man page of git-clone, "--branch can also take tags and detaches the HEAD at that commit in the resulting repository"
155

Use --single-branch option to only clone history leading to tip of the tag. This saves a lot of unnecessary code from being cloned.

git clone <repo_url> --branch <tag_name> --single-branch
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3 Comments

Is --single-branch equivalent to --depth 1?
No, its not equivalent. --single-branch clones the history for a whole branch. With --depth 1 no history at all is cloned.
Also --single-branch is implied when --depth is used. From the manual When creating a shallow clone with the --depth option, this is the default
39 
git clone -b 13.1rc1-Gotham --depth 1 https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc.git Cloning into 'xbmc'... remote: Counting objects: 17977, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (13473/13473), done. Receiving objects: 36% (6554/17977), 19.21 MiB | 469 KiB/s

Will be faster than :

git clone https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc.git Cloning into 'xbmc'... remote: Reusing existing pack: 281705, done. remote: Counting objects: 533, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (177/177), done. Receiving objects: 14% (40643/282238), 55.46 MiB | 578 KiB/s

Or 

git clone -b 13.1rc1-Gotham https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc.git Cloning into 'xbmc'... remote: Reusing existing pack: 281705, done. remote: Counting objects: 533, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (177/177), done. Receiving objects: 12% (34441/282238), 20.25 MiB | 461 KiB/s
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2 Comments

--depth 1 is a gem, so many people download the whole git history just to use the HEAD.
--depth 1 should be made default; if someone tries to chechout a previous commit, they should be prompted to download the rest.
26 
git clone --depth 1 --branch <tag_name> <repo_url>

Example

git clone --depth 1 --branch 0.37.2 https://github.com/apache/incubator-superset.git

<tag_name> : 0.37.2 <repo_url> : https://github.com/apache/incubator-superset.git
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2 Comments

The command is character for character exactly the same as the selected answer.
yea but check the example , it's for better uderstading
8

Use the command

git clone --help

to see whether your git supports the command

git clone --branch tag_name

If not, just do the following:

git clone repo_url cd repo git checkout tag_name
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1 Comment

this is working git clone repo_url cd repo git checkout tag_name
3

Cloning a specific tag, might return 'detached HEAD' state.

As a workaround, try to clone the repo first, and then checkout a specific tag. For example:

repo_url=https://github.com/owner/project.git repo_dir=$(basename $repo_url .git) repo_tag=0.5 git clone --single-branch $repo_url # using --depth 1 can show no tags git --work-tree=$repo_dir --git-dir=$repo_dir/.git checkout tags/$repo_tag

Note: Since Git 1.8.5, you can use -C <path>, instead of --work-tree and --git-dir.

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Cloning a specific tag will detach HEAD. That's the point.
-4

I recommend

git clone --depth 1 [email protected]:etlegacy/etlegacy.git --tags 2.80.2 --single-branch
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4 Comments

Why does this work? I cannot find any documentation on this --tags option. Are you sure that's not just ignored?
Well just try the command and check the results, anyway, on Linux, use auto completion show --tag option
I tried. It doesn't work.
strange, it worked for me last week

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