Clone a repo and checkout a specifc remote branch

> Hi list,
> I've got a few questions from a friend that used git for the first
> time, I answered to all of them but the following.
>
> Scenario:
> He knows the URl of a git repository which contains a few branches. He
> is interested only to a single specific branch.
> He expected to manage to clone the specific remote branch with a
> single command, instead he had to learn the following procedure:
>
> $ git clone git://uri_of_the_repo localdir
> $ cd localdir
> $ git branch
> * master
> # OK, so now he cloned the whole repository and checked out the master branch
> $ git checkout mybranch origin/coolbranch
>
> Wouldn't be an improvement to let the user to specify which remote
> branch he want to be checked out after a clone?
> Something like:
> $ git clone git://uri_of_the_repo:coolbranch localdir
> to get a clone of the whole repository and to check out the
> origin/coolbranch remote branch?
>

> I quickly discussed this scenario on the #git channel and a user
> suggested to use the following procedure:
> $ git init
> $ git fetch git://uri_of_the_repo coolbranch
> which was new to me, I tried it as follow:
> $ git fetch git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git man
> remote: Counting objects: 7319, done.←[K
> remote: Compressing objects: 100% (1536/1536), done.←[K
> remote: Total 7319 (delta 5640), reused 7290 (delta 5625)←[K
> Receiving objects: 100% (7319/7319), 1.40 MiB | 110 KiB/s, done.
> Resolving deltas: 100% (5640/5640), done.
> From git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git
>  * branch            man        -> FETCH_HEAD
>
> but now I don't understand how to checkout the branch :-/
>
> Ciao,
> --
> Paolo
> http://paolo.ciarrocchi.googlepages.com/
> http://mypage.vodafone.it/
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>

>> Something like:
>> $ git clone git://uri_of_the_repo:coolbranch localdir
>> to get a clone of the whole repository and to check out the
>> origin/coolbranch remote branch?
>>
>
> Here's a link to a recent thread on this topic (that started with a
> proposed patch)
>
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/111967
>
> You can read the arguments there.  Johannes Schindelin noted that the
> normal way to do this is like this:
>
> <quote>
> Besides, the common way to check out something different than the remote's
> HEAD is like this:
>
> $ git clone -n $URL
> $ cd $DIR
> $ git checkout -t origin/$BRANCH
> </quote>