Repository (repo)

A version-controlled project store containing tracked content, commit history, references, and related metadata.

A Git repository can live locally or on a remote host and may contain many branches and tags. Only tracked content included in commits becomes history. Ignored files, external databases, secrets, generated artifacts, and uncommitted edits may remain outside it, while shallow clones may contain only part of the history.

Builder example

A repository makes file changes comparable and shareable when the intended source and assets are tracked. It does not guarantee that deployed code matches a reviewed commit; deployment configuration, generated output, dependencies, and environment state also need provenance.

Common confusion: A repository is the tracked folder plus its history, while version control is the system that does the tracking. You put a project under version control, and the repo is the result you then clone, share, or deploy from. One repo can hold many branches and commits inside it.