At the completion of this lesson, learners will be able to:
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Define what a Git repository is.
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Explain the purpose of a repository.
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Identify the basic structure of a repository.
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Differentiate between a local and remote repository at the basic level.
At one point or another in our learning careers we have been tasked with completing a project that uses one or more files. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a piece of software that helped you manage those files and their history?
Perhaps you were working on a Microsoft Word document for this hypothetical project. You include a section that you thought would be great for your topic and support that section by making changes to other areas of your project to get a better flow into your newly included ideas. Everything is great until you have someone read your document and they tell you that information is incorrect and you have now structured your project around that one idea.
Do we go through the entire document and remove the changes you made to perfectly good sections just to root out the bad information? What if you miss some of the changes that you made and you make the document worse because you now have information that leads to sections that no longer exist?
Git solves this problem. Since Git is a version control system, we can save snapshots of how our files looked prior to certain changes made. This means we can just revert to a commit before we made the bad changes. Think of it like a time machine to take us back to better times.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Before learning about how Git tracks those changes, we need to understand what a repository is and how we create one.
A repository (very often referred to as a "repo") is a storage location where Git tracks files, folders, and a history of changes made to all files and folders within itself.
We can think of a repository as a filing cabinet like we explained before. Essentially, each project becomes its own filing cabinet where we can place folders inside of each drawer. In each of those folders, we may have more folders or files within the folders. We may even have loose files inside the filing cabinet drawer.
Within each of these folders and/or files, we also have a history record attached. This allows us to see who has made what changes and when!
A repository at its core contains:
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Project files and folders
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Git tracking information
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Commit history
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Configuration data
A local repository exists on your computer and your computer only. When you create a repository using Git, all files and history are stored on your computer.
This may seem like a waste of time but there are a few benefits from a local repository that are not immediately obvious. As we explained in the introduction, reverting to a previous version of a file is very handy but this is not the only benefit.
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Fast access to tracked files.
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No internet required.
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Safe experimentation when making changes to files.
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Private development that cannot be viewed by others.
A remote repository on the other hand is a copy of your local repository on another system. Typically, remote repositories are hosted on a cloud hosting website such as GitHub, Bitbucket, or equivalents.
However, just because your repository is being hosted somewhere else does not mean that anyone can access it. There are 2 main privacy options for a remote repository which are public and private.
Private repositories only give access to the contained files to the owner of the repository and anyone that owner gives permission to access the files. This means we could use a remote repository to share files privately with other people that may be working with us from anywhere in the world.
Public repositories give access to anyone that finds the repository. The Git Learning Lab is a public repository, meaning that anyone that finds it can access the files contained within it. Public "repos" are a way to be able to disperse information to a lot of people if privacy is not a concern.
It is important to note though that just because a remote repository is a copy of a local repository, it does not mean that making changes to one automatically makes changes to the other. We must explicitly bridge the gap of communication between Git and the hosting platform. Right now, we do not need to worry about that and instead just understand the two concepts.
Benefits of a remote repository include:
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Easy collaboration and sharing of ideas or files.
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Backup and recovery options.
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Access from multiple devices that are not geographically tied to each other.
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Centralized project management.
| Local Repository | Remote Repository |
|---|---|
| Stored on your system | Stored on another system |
| Works without internet | Requires internet access |
| Used for private development | Used for collaborative development or public distribution |
| Private by default | Can be shared with others or not. |