> And the people using it multiple times a year delete it afterwards?

The people wouldn't, but in the environments I'm thinking of, security policies might.

What you're leaning into is a high-risk backup strategy that would rely mostly on luck to get something remotely close to the current version back online. It's pretty reckless.

> The people wouldn't, but in the environments I'm thinking of, security policies might.

In environments that go so far (deleting local checkouts of code out of security concerns), I bet they do have a mirror/copy of the version controlled code.