What does the ".git" mean in a git URL?

Question

I setup a git repo in foo

cd
mkdir foo
cd foo
git init

Now I want to reference that remotely

git clone git+ssh://me@somemachine/home/me/foo.git

fatal: git remote error '/home/me/foo.git' does not appear to be a git repository

So I take .git off and it works. But nearly every example I see has ".git" at the end. What does that ".git" mean?

Also, what's the difference between ssh://... and git+ssh://... (in both meaning and practical terms)

Answer 1

What does that ".git" mean?

.git at the end of a git repository folder is just a naming convention that usually means that the folder is a server and not a client. I believe it's determined by the repository being bare or not (bare repositories have no working directory). The clone URL just points to a folder, if the actual folder has .git at the end, add it. Otherwise, don't.

Also, what's the difference between ssh://... and git+ssh://... (in both meaning and practical terms)

In practical terms they're pretty much the same. In meaning, they're using different protocols to connect to the server. ssh:// opens up an SSH connection to a server with a specific user and runs the git commands on the server (typically the server will restrict the commands by setting the user's shell to /usr/bin/git-shell). git+ssh:// means that the server is running git daemon locally and that clients need to first open an SSH connection to interact with the daemon.