Exactly my initial point. It is really worthwhile to treat code and binary data differently, and the tools don't exist to make it not-so-painful.

To answer a couple of levels up, it's not bad practice because it isn't useful... there are many circumstances where having big binary blobs versioned and associated with code. It is bad practice because the tools are all written _for_ code and can get nasty when filled with binaries.

So there's a problem and a solution, but nobody seems to have put together the right magic yet.