As much as i hate clearcase i have to say it has some "interesting" features to deal with this. When you look at a repo you don't look at one unique version of

As much as i hate clearcase i have to say it has some "interesting" features to deal with this. When you look at a repo you don't look at one unique version of the whole repo, you can create quite advanced "queries" such that for folder /src you look at your branch, for folder /3dpartylibs you look at version 5 and for folder /tests you look at head(latest). And since your working directory can be network attached (dynamic view) you dont have to "update" manually, head is like a living animal! Its like having subrepos built in. While this is interesting it also requires a lot of discipline and almost one person dedicated as full time "dba" to not end up with spaghetti. Since there is no unique version number of the repo you have to store these queries and manually keep adding labels to be able to go back to an exact point of time. It does have some uses like being able to run a new test on old code to find the first version when something broke or being able to change versions of external libraries or blob assets quickly but its hard to say if its worth it since it comes with so many other problems.