How to git clone a specific tag

Question

From git-clone(1) Manual Page

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

Answer 1

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 , instead of --work-tree and --git-dir.