Most efficient way to fetch a single file from a given revision or branch?

Suppose I have a Git URL + revision and I want to fetch the README.md file, if present.

My current solution is to:

• Create a temporary folder
• Git clone from the URL into the folder
• Git checkout the revision, branch or tag
• Read
• Clean-up the folder

This works, but is it the best approach using isomorphic-git?

I believe that the git CLI tool can do this efficiently using git archive.

[wmhilton]

I should add an option to checkout to check out a specific filepath. That would save a lot of disk thrashing.

[wmhilton]

it might make sense to add an option to skip the checkout step at the end of a normal clone.

FYI I have added a noCheckout parameter to clone in #240.