Clone repository and “checkout” to "tags/<my_tag>"

[conFusl]

More a general Q/A than an issue, but I'm struggling with this topic.

I clone a repository using Repo.clone_from(). Afterwards, I simply want to switch to a specified tag within the repository, similar to git checkout tags/<my_tag>.

I found the following solution, but it resets HEAD of my master branch, which is not what I want:

        logging.info("Cloning repo... " + name)
        repo = Repo.clone_from(url, path)
        repo.head.reference = repo.tags[tag].commit

Is it possible to perform something like a git checkout tags/<my_tag> where I just switch to the current tag, but am able to switch also back to the current / latest commit on the repository?

[Byron]

That's quite alright, the issue was tagged accordingly. Thanks.

That's a great finding! I did do some searching to come up with the following.

• detach the HEAD to point to the tag: repo.head.set_reference(repo.tags[tag].commit
• reset the working tree to the current commit, but… it seems wonky to do it like this especially since there is repo.git.checkout(tag) which does exactly what you want.

I hope this answers the question - GitPython is a lot of 'low-level' plumbing, which makes some common operations unintuitive. These are best left to the git porcelain, provided by the git command-line interface.

Even though I am closing the issue, please feel free to keep posting follow-ups.

[conFusl]

Thanks a lot for the reply.
I was struggling to follow the API description - and where I have which possibilities, e.g. repo, git, head, tags[]...

Your solution does exactly what I expected, and I was pretty sure that there is a possibility :-) Thanks!