[tom_]

It's version control, not necessarily just source control! If something could benefit from being versioned, why would you not check it in? You then guarantee everybody has the same version. That's exactly what this thing is there for.

Git's design can limit its usefulness in this respect - though perhaps you could solve this to some extent with git LFS? - but not all version control systems have this problem.

[fragmede]

git annex (or git LFS, if you buy into github's NIH) is requisite if you want to use git like this, broadly. git will happily store any and all binaries you ask it to, but upon (blind) checkout, it will grab every single revision of said binary, taking up as much however much space that takes.

(partial clones avoid this, but, as git isn't designed for this use case, grabbing all of history happens far too easily.)