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    You're essentially trying to replicate the job of your version control system directly in the file. Doing such a thing would definitely raise a flag in my head. If your colleagues don't read the commit messages and they resurrect a file that was rightfully deleted and it passes code reviewing, there's definitely something wrong in your team, and it's a great opportunity to teach them better. Commented Jun 14, 2017 at 16:07
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    @GregBurghardt This seems like a good question about a bad idea. Perhaps people are downvoting based on the second part of that (when, IMO, they should be upvoting for the first)? Commented Jun 14, 2017 at 17:16
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    "Next time when I have to commit/check in something in the project to version control, I press SVN->Delete" Are you saying you delete them in a (potentially) entirely unrelated commit? Commented Jun 14, 2017 at 19:03
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    Of course I do but a commit message is sometimes not read by colleagues. - if they're not checking the commit message, it's safe to assume they aren't interested in why the file was removed... otherwise they should check the commit message. Commented Jun 14, 2017 at 20:55
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    If I want to know why a file disappeared from my VCS checkout, I will look in the change history first, and if that doesn't explain things, I will read the discussion that happened when the deletion was reviewed. (If you don't have a code review process that every change goes through, you have bigger problems.) And if that is still unenlightening I will talk to whoever deleted the file. I might look at the former contents of the file to try to discover what it used to do, but not for an explanation of the deletion. Commented Jun 15, 2017 at 17:43