Maybe Docker is the solution. Your "working state" is now in an image (maybe a Docker file that checks out particular revisions of different repos), so putting

Maybe Docker is the solution. Your "working state" is now in an image (maybe a Docker file that checks out particular revisions of different repos), so putting everything into one giant VC repo is not necessary. A versioned Dockerfile that says "this is how we built SystemX at version 1.5" is much better than doing it in Git, as it also covers how the underlying server was built, while a giant git repo might have every application you need at the correct version, but won't say anything about the server it is deployed to.