Re: git clone tag shallow

Hi Duy,

Looking closer at the rest of the docs, I guess it is consistent, but not terribly helpful. Throughout the docs (--help and man), it is never very clear what objects a command may accept or not. here is what I get from it:

Whenever a command description involves "<branch>" this can, depending
on the command, refer to
1) a name that, when prepended with "refs/heads/", is a valid ref,
2) a name that, when prepended with "refs/heads/" or "refs/tags", is a
valid ref,
3) a name that, when prepended with "refs/[heads|tags]/", or unique in
"refs/remotes/*/" is a valid ref

Now in the docu I don't see a nice distinction between 1), 2) and 3). I could work on a patch if someone tells me how to clearly distinguish those cases.

Example for 1) git clone --branch <branch> in git 1.7.x Example for 2) git clone --branch <branch> in git 1.8.x Example for 3) git checkout <branch> in git 1.8.x

I would like the docs to relate to those e.g. as
1) git clone --branch <local-branch>
2) git clone --branch <local-branch-or-tag>
3) git checkout <commit-label>
or something similar, in the future. But I wont create a patch before
having some blessing on the labels to use.

On a related note, what would help my use-case would be an extension to git clone such that git clone [--deep] accepted also most other kinds of commit references, such as SHA-IDs.

Such that git clone --deep --branch 2h134vjvbc would work. Is there a plan to introduce that as well?

cheers,
  Thibault

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 7:49 AM, Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> wrote: