Re: Need to version control entire root file system

   >    Anyway, this kind of use does not really need distributed SCM
   >    so I don't feel guilty saying use Subversion for it...

   > Subversion isn't really what the OP is looking for either, since
   > it also uses meta-data.  Infact, you cannot have a VCS without
   > meta-data, so there is nothing out there that will fit the OPs
   > description.

   Actually SCMs such as Arch which only have a single meta-data
   directory are pretty easy to adapt to his case: just keep the
   meta-data directory elsewhere and move it back to its original
   place (or make a symlink, it'll probably work just as well)
   temporarily whenever you need to run an SCM command.

You still have {arch} for the whole tree, and .arch-ids for each
sub-directory.