git advice

For an overnight tarball builder against 
https://gitorious.org/freetds/freetds, what is the best way to get the
latest HEAD and branch code?  

Currently in CVS, I do:  

1.  cd $(TOPSRC) 
2.  /bin/rm -rf .cvsignore *
3.  /usr/bin/cvs checkout -r $(BRANCH) freetds

The equivalent would seem to be "git clone" but that seems somehow
barbaric.  My intuition tells me that's not the git way, because
distributed repositories are designed to avoid refetching the code.  

If avoiding rm -rf, I'd like advice on programmatically detecting and
reverting modified files.  (Files can be modified, both inadvertently
and intentionally in the process of producing the tarball.  Consider
configure.ac and the SONAME.)  

Suggestions?

--jkl