Are there version control systems that allow you to permanently delete files?

Question

I need to keep under version some large files (some Gigs).

I don't need, and I can't keep under version all the version of the files. I want to be able to remove from my VCS large files version at some moment.

The files that I want to keep under version control are big .zip files or ISO images. These files may contains executable software or data (seismic data, SAR images, GNSS data) and they are provided by the software supplier of my company.

What control version system could I use?

Answer 1

In CVS you can do that by removing the files from the repo. Subversion allows that by dumping the content of the repo and filter it to remove the files (that is a bit cumbersome). Perforce has an obliterate command for that. Many of the newer distributed VCS make it rather difficult by their usage of hashes all over the places and the fact that your repo may have been replicated elsewhere also complicate things. Hg has a strip command (part of the Mq extension), Git can also do that I think.

Answer 2

I don’t think there’s any version control system that allows you do that regularly because that goes against everything version control systems stand for.