How can I specify which branch should be checked out in a fresh clone?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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>.

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Example

$ cd ~/Desktop
$ git clone --branch maint https://github.com/git/git
$ cd git
$ git branch
* maint