Distributed VCS Basics

Git is a distributed version control system, meaning that you may have many copies of a repository and Git will help you keep all the copies in sync. Having just learned about branches in Git you might wonder why you would want multiple copies of a repository. Why not just use one repository with multiple branches?

The reason is that often you will be working with a team of people, and each individual will need a copy of the repository on their computer. Another common need is to be able to work on a repository from multiple devices, perhaps a work computer and a personal computer at home—each device can have a copy of the repository.

Git will help you make sure that changes made in one copy get applied correctly in other copies.

So how can you manage multiple copies of the same repository using Git? Read on to find out!