How to Download a Specific Tag With Git

This article illustrates how you can clone a repository at a specific tag version. Git tags signify an important milestone in code production.

If you have a remote repository with tags and are wondering how you can clone the repo and reach a specific tag, this article has you covered.

Download a Specific Tag With Git

For easier context, we will use an example to illustrate the concept.

Assuming this image below represents that remote repository’s tags, how do we clone the repo at v0.0.4?

There are several ways of doing this. You can use the git clone command or the git clone and the git checkout commands combined.

Let’s start with the git clone command.

the git clone Command

We can pass a tag as an argument to the git clone command to clone and detach our HEAD to move it to the commit at the v0.0.4 tag. Below is an illustration.

$ git clone -b v0.0.4 https://github.com/user/repo.git

By running the command below, we can create a new branch of this tag.

$ git checkout -b Dev

the git checkout Command

Alternatively, we can clone the repository and move our HEAD ref to the v0.0.4 tag.

To clone the repo, we will run:

$ git clone https://github.com/user/repo.git

Once the clone is done, we can move HEAD to the commit at v0.0.4, as illustrated below.

$ git checkout tags/v0.0.4

This will switch us into detached HEAD mode. We can run the git checkout command to create a new branch based on our tag.

$ git checkout -b newbranch

This can be condensed into one command, as shown below.

$ git checkout tags/v0.0.4 -b newbranch

In conclusion, the methods discussed above end up cloning the whole Git repository. One is a shortcut for the other.

Your choice depends on your preference since both methods accomplish the same thing.