Re: Newbie grief

[Michael Witten <mfwitten@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 03 May 2012 18:20:43 +0200, Hallvard Furuseth wrote:

> On Thu, 03 May 2012 16:09:15 -0000, Michael Witten wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 03 May 2012 14:23:59 +0200, Hallvard Furuseth wrote:
>>
>>> I mean 'git clone --bare bar.git foo.git' does not give foo.git
>>> a remote named 'origin' with a branch origin/master.  Not sure
>>> if there is a _simple_ way to do it well either.  init + fetch
>>> above does not try to hardlink objects/packs like clone does.
>>>
>>>> (...)
>>>>   $ git init bar.git; cd bar.git
>>>>   $ echo a > a; git add a; git commit -m a; cd ..
>>>>   $ git clone --bare bar.git foo.git; cd foo.git
>>>
>>>    $ git branch -a
>>>    * master
>>
>> From `git help clone':
>>
>>   --bare
>>       Make a bare GIT repository. That is, instead of creating
>>       <directory> and placing the administrative files in
>>       <directory>/.git, make the <directory> itself the $GIT_DIR.
>>       This obviously implies the -n because there is nowhere to
>>       check out the working tree. Also the branch heads at the
>>       remote are copied directly to corresponding local branch
>>       heads, without mapping them to refs/remotes/origin/. When
>>       this option is used, neither remote-tracking branches nor the
>>       related configuration variables are created.
>
> Yes, I know.  I just don't know why.

I imagine that the purpose behind a bare repository is really just to
provide a repository into which objects may be pushed and from which
objects may be fetched, and that's it; it's sole purpose is to act
as a point of communication. Cloning a repository with --bare is
meant to simplify the task of setting up a bare repository with
some initial content.

Fortunately, we're talking about the history of a revision control
system. I found this with `git blame -L70,76 71821351^ git-clone.txt':

  commit 4fb66a62eeb7bfec115cd0058d7a05ab62fc23e7
  Author: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
  Date:   Sun Jan 22 17:27:52 2006 -0800
  
      clone: do not create remotes/origin nor origin branch in a bare repository.
      
      It is simply pointless, since no merges will ever happen in such
      a repository.
      
      Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>

That certainly corroborates the limited purpose of a bare repository.