because your local history is bound to get really big in a short period of time?

what is? well, I don't really think anything is. it works with svn and dropbox, but that doesn't mean that is a good choice either.

obviously git etc. is mainly designed for text files. i've long thought about what the right way to approach this issue is.

edit: will read more about annex

Some of the commercial version-control systems handle big binaries reasonably well. That's one reason many game companies, for example, use Perforce, since it doesn't choke on piles of art assets.