Q:

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

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)

A:

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.

A:

It's a common (but certainly not universal) convention that bare git repositories are created in directories whose names end with .git. That's the reason that you usually see .git at the end of repository URLs.
I'm not sure about the git+ssh scheme - in fact I can't find a reference to it in the git man pages. According to the Eclipse forums the protocol has been removed in favor of plain old ssh. (The Eclipse forums are of course not an official source of information about git, but that would make sense. I never knew what the difference was supposed to be anyway.)

