Magento 2 different framework locations

Question

I have installed Magento 2 a month ago on a server. The framework location is

\vendor\magento\framework

I just downloaded a new archive to load it into my IDE, but the strange thing is it has a different path for the framework.

\lib\internal\Magento\Framework

Edit: \app\code\Magento was what i had as a path in the first place. But those seems to be the modules just like Magento 1? To be clear, my server doenn't have this path or any contents. To sum up: I am confused.

What is the difference? Which one is preferend and why? And, how can i get the same version locally without having to download all the files from the server?

Answer 1

In the first case you installed Magento2 with composer, in second cloned from Git or downloaded repository. Here you can see what is the difference. http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/install-gde/continue.html . I think it's preferable to use composer in your case.

Answer 2

The first is the composer installed version with all repos under the vendor folder.

The second probably is the full package, though I am not certain as I havn't used this package before.

For me the composer version is preferred, as it is easier to keep up-to-date.