Are the remote and centralized repository the same thing in git?

Question

They seem to be synonyms, but I can\'t tell quite yet.

Basing this off the Subversion vs. DVCS debate here.

Answer 1

Maybe.

Remote repositories are a fundamental feature of git (though you can use git without a remote). "Central" repositories are a matter of project organization.

A remote git repository is any repository other than your local one; you can push, pull, and fetch to it from your local repo.

If you have a number of developers working on a project, each one will have his or her own local repository, and you might have a single "central" repository to which each developer can push and pull. This can give you the advantages of a non-distributed DCVS while still letting each developer make local changes. The "central" repository is then a remote repository for each of the developers. (It should be a "bare" repo, since pushing to a non-bare repo is limited.)

With a central repository, you can have a single definitive location that defines the current state of the project. Other organizations are possible; for example, developers can share changes by sending each other pull requests.