How to git clone a specific tag

git clone --depth 1 --branch <tag_name> <repo_url>

--depth 1 is optional but if you only need the state at that one revision, you probably want to skip downloading all the history up to that revision.

Use --single-branch option to only clone history leading to tip of the tag. This saves a lot of unnecessary code from being cloned.

git clone <repo_url> --branch <tag_name> --single-branch

git clone -b 13.1rc1-Gotham  --depth 1  https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc.git
Cloning into 'xbmc'...
remote: Counting objects: 17977, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (13473/13473), done.
Receiving objects:  36% (6554/17977), 19.21 MiB | 469 KiB/s    

Will be faster than :

git clone https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc.git
Cloning into 'xbmc'...
remote: Reusing existing pack: 281705, done.
remote: Counting objects: 533, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (177/177), done.
Receiving objects:  14% (40643/282238), 55.46 MiB | 578 KiB/s

Or

git clone -b 13.1rc1-Gotham  https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc.git
Cloning into 'xbmc'...
remote: Reusing existing pack: 281705, done.
remote: Counting objects: 533, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (177/177), done.
Receiving objects:  12% (34441/282238), 20.25 MiB | 461 KiB/s