While I understand the

Git Gui, on the other hand responds to the same exact Y:\as path with an error:

This is the same Git Gui that came with the official Git distribution:

Any idea why is? Is this a bug? as designed?

BTW, git-gui has no issue browsing the working directory matching same exact push/repo:

CodePudding user response：

The screen capture you posted shows gitk, a GUI frontend to git log which will indeed work on any kind of repository -- bare or non bare. It is a tool independant from git-gui which can be run on its own, by simply invoking gitk from a terminal, or by double-clicking a shortcut if you have one.

From the view you show in your capture: you can see that you have a Help > About gitk entry in the menu.

Since you mention git gui, I imagine you are used to accessing this view by first running git gui, then selecting Repository > Visualize [my branch]'s History (or Repository > Visualize All Branch History)

git-gui itself, on the other hand, is geared towards editing your index (the files you stage or unstage before committing), and this requires a non bare repository, which is why you get the error you mention when you try to target a bare repository.

Additionally, when invoking gitk from the command line, you can add almost any option you would pass to git log :

gitk                        # history of your active branch
gitk HEAD @{u}              # combined history of active branch   upstream
gitk foo bar origin/baz     # combined history of these 3 branches
gitk --all                  # combined history of all branches
gitk --follow -- that/file  # display only commits that modify that/file
gitk -G 'that word'         # filter history using one of the pickaxe options
# etc ...

you may also change these git log options on an active gitk window by going to View > Edit view ... [F4] and setting the options in the graphical window you see.