concepts: create DVC Remote page

[iesahin]

that describes its differences from external dependencies?

In External Dependencies there is a line

Note that remote storage is a different
feature.

but also in remote command ref

What is a "local remote" ?

While the term may seem contradictory, it doesn't have to be. The "local" part
refers to the type of location where the storage is: another directory in the
same file system. "Remote" is how we call storage for DVC projects.
It's essentially a local backup for data tracked by DVC.

AFAICT the difference between remotes and dependencies is this: Remotes are actually containers that can store external dependencies and external outputs. A file can be a dependency to a stage or an output from a stage, can may be stored in a remote or in .dvc/cache. Remote is a location designation, it means not stored in .dvc/cache. Dependency/output is a role designation, a file can be in dependency role for a stage, in output role in another stage, both if a stage reads and writes to the same file or neither if the file is not involved in any pipeline.

Is there any error in my understanding? @jorgeorpinel @shcheklein

[jorgeorpinel]

@iesahin you got it mostly right. It's a confusion with terminology: The terms "remote" and "external" can have general meanings that are pretty similar. See #608 and #1127

A DVC Remote or what we most often call remote storage in DVC is a storage unit you configure for the project where (parts of) the cache can be pushed/pulled to/from.

But then on top of that we support external data in different ways (mainly as dependencies or outputs) and to indicate its location you can use the some of same URLs that remote storage configuration supports. There's even a special format like remote://myremote/path to locate external files/dirs.

See also #520

both if a stage reads and writes to the same file

p.s. on this that's more of a Q about deps and out. I don't think you can define the same file as dep and out of a single state. There's other constraints like no overlapping outputs among stages.

[jorgeorpinel]

That said I think we definitely want a concept page (and probably some guides) that extracts all the info about remotes. But not sure we need to focus on a separate page to disambiguate external deps. Let's just keep that in mind as we address #520?

[jorgeorpinel]

We will address this as part of #550