How to Clone a Specific Git Tag

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

git clone -b 13.1rc1-Gotham  --depth 1  
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 
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  
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

git clone --depth 1 --branch <tag_name> <repo_url>

Example

git clone --depth 1 --branch 0.37.2

<tag_name> : 0.37.2

<repo_url> : 

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

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=
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.