It can happen that you start working on a project in a local repository, and then you feel the need to move it to a centralized server to make it available for other people or from other locations.

You can easily convert a regular repository to a bare one using the git clone command with the same --bare option:

$ git clone --bare my_project my_project.git

In this manner, you have a 1:1 copy of your repository in another folder, but in a bare version, ready to be pushed.