How do I clone a single branch in Git?

I have a local Git repository called 'skeleton' that I use for storing project skeletons. It has a few branches, for different kinds of projects:

casey@agave [~/Projects/skeleton] git branch
* master
  rails
  c
  c++

If I want to check out the master branch for a new project, I can do

casey@agave [~/Projects] git clone skeleton new
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/casey/Projects/new/.git/

and everything is how I want it. Specifically, the new master branch points to the skeleton master branch, and I can push and pull to move around changes to the basic project setup.

What doesn't work, however, is if I want to clone another branch. I can't get it so that I only pull the branch I want, for instance the rails branch, and then the new repository has a master branch that pushes to and pulls from the skeleton repository's rails branch, by default.

Is there a good way to go about doing this? Or, maybe this isn't the way that Git wants me to structure things, and I'm certainly open to that. Perhaps I should have multiple repositories, with the Ruby on Rails skeleton repository tracking the master skeleton repository? And any individual project cloning the Ruby on Rails skeleton repository.

VonC

Note: the git1.7.10 (April 2012) actually allows you to clone only one branch:

# clone only the remote primary HEAD (default: origin/master)
git clone --single-branch

as in:
git clone <url> --branch <branch> --single-branch [<folder>]

You can see it in t5500-fetch-pack.sh:

test_expect_success 'single branch clone' '
  git clone --single-branch "file://$(pwd)/." singlebranch
'

Tobu comments that:

This is implicit when doing a shallow clone.
This makes git clone --depth 1 the easiest way to save bandwidth.

And since Git 1.9.0 (February 2014), shallow clones support data transfer (push/pull), so that option is even more useful now.
See more at "Is git clone --depth 1 (shallow clone) more useful than it makes out?".

"Undoing" a shallow clone is detailed at "Convert shallow clone to full clone" (git 1.8.3+)

# unshallow the current branch
git fetch --unshallow

# for getting back all the branches (see Peter Cordes' comment)
git config remote.origin.fetch refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
git fetch --unshallow

As Chris comments:

the magic line for getting missing branches to reverse --single-branch is (git v2.1.4):

git config remote.origin.fetch +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
git fetch --unshallow

Alex Nolasco

One way is to execute the following.

git clone user@git-server:project_name.git -b branch_name /your/folder

Where branch_name is the branch of your choice and "/your/folder" is the destination folder for that branch. It's true that this will bring other branches giving you the opportunity to merge back and forth. Now, starting with Git 1.7.10, you can now do this

git clone user@git-server:project_name.git -b branch_name --single-branch /your/folder

Frerich Raabe

Using Git version 1.7.3.1 (on Windows), here's what I do ($BRANCH is the name of the branch I want to checkout and $REMOTE_REPO is the URL of the remote repository I want to clone from):

mkdir $BRANCH
cd $BRANCH
git init
git remote add -t $BRANCH -f origin $REMOTE_REPO
git checkout $BRANCH

The advantage of this approach is that subsequent git pull (or git fetch) calls will also just download the requested branch.

jkp

You can try the long-winded way:

mkdir newrepo.git
cd newrepo.git
git init
git remote add origin file:///path/to/original
git fetch origin branchiwant:refs/remotes/origin/branchiwant
git checkout -b branchiwant --track origin/branchiwant

What this does is:

Create and init an empty Git repository.
Adds the original repository as a remote called origin.
Fetches only the branch you require from the remote called origin.
Creates and checks out a new branch that is set up to track the source branch you just cloned.

Hopefully that will be something like what you are after.

nosaiba darwish

You can do it by using the below command:

git clone -b branch_name --single-branch project_url local_folder_to_clone_in

Casey

From git-clone man page:

--single-branch is your friend during clone remember to use with --branch <branch name> or only remote primary HEAD will be cloned (master by default)

Always remember to do Ctrl + F5 to read fresh source, not the one from cache :-) (I didn't so didn't know about this option for long time.)

Jitendra

git clone <url> --branch <branch> --single-branch

Just put in URL and branch name.

Cubiczx

Clone only one branch. This is the easiest way:

$ git clone -b BRANCH_NAME --single-branch git@bitbucket.org:___/PROJECTNAME.git

For cloning a specific branch you can do :

git clone --branch yourBranchName git@yourRepository.git

Prem S

For cloning a branch of Git you don't have the public key to, use this:

git clone -b <branch> <Git repository URL or clone URL you get from Git repository>

A little late but I wanted to add the solution I used to solve this problem. I found the solution here.

Anyway, the question seems to be asking 'how to start a new project from a branch of another repo?'

To this, the solution I used would be to first create a new repo in github or where ever. This will serve as the repo to your new project.

On your local machine, navigate to the project that has the branch you want to use as the template for your new project.

Run the command:

git push https://github.com/accountname/new-repo.git +old_branch:master

What this will do is push the old_branch to new-repo and make it the master branch of the new repo.

You then just have to clone the new repo down to your new project's local directory and you have a new project started at the old branch.

Let us take the example of flask repo. It has 3 branches in addition to master. Let us checkout the 1.1.x remote branch

clone the git repo

git clone https://github.com/pallets/flask

cd into the repo.

cd flask

fetch remote branch 1.1.x

git fetch origin 1.1.x

checkout the branch

git checkout 1.1.x

You will switch to the branch 1.1.x and it will track the remote 1.1.x branch.

dhS

Open the cmd.

cd folder_name (enter the path where to clone the branch)

Just one command:

git clone url_of_projecturltoclone -b branch_name

Pramod Setlur

Can be done in 2 steps

Clone the repository
- git clone <http url>
Checkout the branch you want
- git checkout $BranchName

Ajay Kumar

Open Git Bash shell.
Create an directory in your file system where you want to checkout.
- $ mkdir Feature_develop_branch
Change directory to Feature_develop_branch folder.
- $ cd Feature_develop_branch
Clone the repository using external clone URL.
- $ git clone https://someurl.repositoryName.git
After cloning, change the directory to created repositoryName.
- $ cd /repositoryName
Check out the branch.
- $ git checkout <Branch Name>

来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48962738/bit-bucket-how-to-clone-only-one-branch-in-android-studio

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