IMO screw that. It's maybe a good way to build software in exactly one environment for exactly one environment, deployment to a corporate server fleet.
replyConsider a Linux desktop distro: if every little binary (out of order of magnitude 1000) acted like the center of the universe with gigabytes of build environment and "opinions" galore instead of portability, builds would take much more resources than they already do and parts wouldn't necessarily work together.
Visual Studio and Xcode take up tens of gigabytes, are updated often, and include system components. Storing them in VCS is impossible, and would be a waste of disk space.
replyDisagree. They’re stored _somewhwre_ anyway, and they may as well be versioned.
replyPutting toolchains in perforce is how it works for lots of C++ shops, the setup instructions are “sync and hit build”, whether there’s a toolchain upgrade required or not
You could consider ZFS a VCS, and it can easily store multiple versions (snapshots) of Visual Studio.
replyIt's not impossible, there just isn't that much demand for it.