This is an excellent point; I guess you can't drop the "connectivity to central server" requirement and still implement global locking. Having said that, some

This is an excellent point; I guess you can't drop the "connectivity to central server" requirement and still implement global locking. Having said that, some DVCSes do support a form of locking - similarly to changes, tags, etc, locks can be created and pushed / pulled. An example would be Veracity's implementation: http://veracity-scm.com/qa/questions/1105/how-do-file-locks-work http://veracity-scm.com/qa/questions/1105/how-do-file-locks-... Obviously this is not quite as foolproof as with a centralised version control system, but using strict workflows (i.e. always pushing locks immediately and pulling before you work on binary files) could create a workable compromise. I suppose you could create some plugins for your favourite DVCS to emulate this behaviour, and to enforce the workflow.