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