Comment by tragomaskhalos

Then there is the situation where, one day, your source code control system tells you there are no files .... because someone in the org you are working at figured noone was using the server and wiped it. This really happened on a job I was on. Luckily we still had source dotted around a dozen or so machines, at various levels of up-to-datedness, so it was possible (with a load of scripting code generating some helpful timeline pix) to forensically reconstruct not just the tip but a decent portion of the history too. Fun times.