Is there a faster way to git-svn clone a wordpress plugin from the subversion repository?

When cloning a SVN repo with git-svn it searches laboriously through every revision for changes that are relevant (at least as I understand it). Is there anyway to make this process quicker?

I found this link: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/747075/how-to-git-svn-clone-the-last-n-revisions-from-a-subversion-repository that suggests it is possible to limit the number of revisions, just need to figure out how far back to go and how to find that number

Yep, you can pass the initial revision from which to start scanning:

git svn clone -s -r387893 http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/your-plugin/

You can hunt down that revision by using this command:

svn log http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/your-plugin/

The last line shows the earliest revision.

Source:

http://teleogistic.net/2011/05/revisiting-git-github-and-the-wordpress-org-plugin-repository/