P4 is more "industry standard" than "state of the art"... But it does handle large files and partial checkouts without feeling bolted on.

Git has had native partial checkout for ages.

Do you know any large, non-technical teams that use it? The workflow is just not feasible even if the feature technically exist.

Things like submodules become even more complex. Without submodules there's no equivalent to map in library/engine code into place in a way where you can push changes back upstream.

Last I checked, things like logs and pulling still operate on every commit so it doesn't really scale the same way.

> partial checkouts without feeling bolted on.

OP said this, maybe Perforce's partial checkouts are just better than Git's.