Transport protocols and remote helpers
In general, URLs in the configuration of remote repository contain information about the transport protocol, the address of the remote server (where appropriate), and the path to the repository. Sometimes, the server that provides access to the remote repository supports various transport protocols; you need to select which one to use. This section is intended to help with this choice.
Local transport
If the remote repository is on the same local filesystem, you can use either the path to the repository or the file:// schema to specify the repository URL:
/path/to/repo.git/ file:///path/to/repo.git/
The former implies the --local option to the Git clone, which bypasses the smart Git-aware mechanism and simply makes a copy (or a hard link for immutable files under .git/objects, though you can avoid this with the --no-hardlinks option); the latter is slower but can be used to get a clean copy of a repository (for example, after history...
