What's the -practical- difference between a Bare and non-Bare repository?

I've been reading about the bare and non-bare / default repositories in Git. I haven't been able to understand quite well (theoretically) the differences between them, and why I should "push" to a bare repository. Here's the deal:

Currently, I'm the only one working on a project on 3 different computers, but there will be more people involved in it later, so I'm using Git for the version control. I clone the bare repo on all computers, and when I finish my modifications on one of them, I commit and push the changes to the bare repo. From what I've read, the bare repository does NOT have a "working tree", so if I clone the bare repo, I won't have a "working tree".

I'm guessing that the working tree stores the commit information, branches, etc. from the project. That wouldn't appear in the bare repo. So it seems better for me to "push" the commits to the repo with the working tree.

Then, why should I use the bare repository and why not? What's the practical difference? That would not be beneficial to more people working on a project, I suppose.

What are your methods for this kind of work? Suggestions?

Solution 1:

Another difference between a bare and non-bare repository is that a bare repository does not have a default remote origin repository:

~/Projects$ git clone --bare test bare
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/derek/Projects/bare/
~/Projects$ cd bare
~/Projects/bare$ git branch -a
* master
~/Projects/bare$ cd ..
~/Projects$ git clone test non-bare
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/derek/Projects/non-bare/.git/
~/Projects$ cd non-bare
~/Projects/non-bare$ git branch -a
* master
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/master

From the manual page for git clone --bare:

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.

Presumably, when it creates a bare repository, Git assumes that the bare repository will serve as the origin repository for several remote users, so it does not create the default remote origin. What this means is that basic git pull and git push operations won't work since Git assumes that without a workspace, you don't intend to commit any changes to the bare repository:

~/Projects/bare$ git push
fatal: No destination configured to push to.
~/Projects/bare$ git pull
fatal: /usr/lib/git-core/git-pull cannot be used without a working tree.
~/Projects/bare$ 

Solution 2:

5 years too late, I know, but no-one actually answered the question:

Then, why should I use the bare repository and why not? What's the practical difference? That would not be beneficial to more people working on a project, I suppose.

What are your methods for this kind of work? Suggestions?

To quote directly from the Loeliger/MCullough book (978-1-449-31638-9, p196/7):

A bare repository might seem to be of little use, but its role is crucial: to serve as an authoritative focal point for collaborative development. Other developers clone and fetch from the bare repository and push updates to it... if you set up a repository into which developers push changes, it should be bare. In effect, this is a special case of the more general best practice that a published repository should be bare.

Solution 3:

The distinction between a bare and non-bare Git repository is artificial and misleading since a workspace is not part of the repository and a repository doesn't require a workspace. Strictly speaking, a Git repository includes those objects that describe the state of the repository. These objects may exist in any directory, but typically exist in the .git directory in the top-level directory of the workspace. The workspace is a directory tree that represents a particular commit in the repository, but it may exist in any directory or not at all. Environment variable $GIT_DIR links a workspace to the repository from which it originates.

Git commands git clone and git init both have options --bare that create repositories without an initial workspace. It's unfortunate that Git conflates the two separate, but related concepts of workspace and repository and then uses the confusing term bare to separate the two ideas.