Suppose origin has a few branches (master (HEAD)
, next
, pu
, and maint
), some tags (v1
, v2
, v3
), some remote branches (devA/master
, devB/master
), and some other refs (refs/foo/bar
, refs/foo/baz
, which might be notes, stashes, other devs’ namespaces, who knows).
git clone
(non-bare): You will get all of the tags copied, a local branchmaster (HEAD)
tracking a remote branchorigin/master
, and remote branchesorigin/next
,origin/pu
, andorigin/maint
. The tracking branches are set up so that if you do something likegit fetch origin
, they’ll be fetched as you expect. Any remote branches (in the cloned remote) and other refs are completely ignored.git clone --bare
: You will get all of the tags copied, local branchesmaster (HEAD)
,next
,pu
, andmaint
, no remote tracking branches. That is, all branches are copied as is, and it’s set up completely independent, with no expectation of fetching again. Any remote branches (in the cloned remote) and other refs are completely ignored.
To summarize,
git clone
is used when we need to point to an existing repo and make a clone or copy of that repo at in a new directory.git clone --bare
is used to make a copy of the remote repository with an omitted working directory.