In Git Extensions, the user can, when cloning a repository, specify which branch (possibly other than master
) should be checked out in the resulting clone.
How can I do that at the command line?
In Git Extensions, the user can, when cloning a repository, specify which branch (possibly other than master
) should be checked out in the resulting clone.
How can I do that at the command line?
The answer, as often, is in the man pages (in the git-clone
man page, here):
--branch <name>, -b <name>
Instead of pointing the newly created HEAD to the branch pointed
to by the cloned repository's HEAD, point to <name> branch
instead. In a non-bare repository, this is the branch that will
be checked out. --branch can also take tags and detaches the
HEAD at that commit in the resulting repository.
So you want to run
git clone --branch <name> <repository>
where <name>
stands for the name of the branch that you want checked out in your clone of <repository>
.
$ cd ~/Desktop
$ git clone --branch maint https://github.com/git/git
$ cd git
$ git branch
* maint