Version control for your Home Directory

There is a sub-group of version control users (a growing group, I believe) that manage their entire home directory in a version control system. There are several arguments for this use, and I have played with it off and on, but never really "moved in" all the way. I'm probably getting closer to the day.

Other people use version control for their /etc directory on Linux boxes. /etc holds much of the common configuration files on many Unix based distributions, and being able to "go back" to a previous configuration can be really handy.

Josh Carter has written a good article on SVN vs. Mercurial vs. Git For Managing Your Home Directory comparing several of the major version control systems for their suitability for this use. Using version control for a home directory puts somewhat different demands on a system, since files are often larger, may change more or less frequently, and are commonly binary (pictures, etc.). Many version control systems are optimized for the small, text based files of source code nearly exclusively.

A good article with lots of details and statistics.