bug#65027: 30.0.50; [PATCH] Document .elpaignore behavior in the Emacs Lisp manual

[Stefan Kangas]

Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com> writes:

> X-Debbugs-Cc: philipk@posteo.net
>
> From the discussion in bug#64985, Eli mentioned that .elpaignore wasn't
> documented. (It turns out it's mentioned briefly in the GNU ELPA README, but
> that's the only place I could find.) Here's a small patch to document this in
> the Package section of the Emacs Lisp manual.
>
> This is just a first pass at documenting this feature, so I'm happy to add
> further details if anyone thinks it's warranted.

There was talk in this bug report about writing a new "package manual",
and Protesilaos volunteered to write a first draft.

But while we wait for that work to complete, is there any reason not to
install the below patch?  Because we currently don't have any
documentation for .elpaignore, and it's kind of frustrating to have to
tell people that it exists over and over.

Thoughts/objections?  Thanks in advance.

> From a5dc5f63003aea4bda4f382ec46c0556edb14f1a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2023 21:51:18 -0700
> Subject: [PATCH] * doc/lispref/package.texi (Multi-file Packages): Document
>  ".elpaignore".
>
> ---
>  doc/lispref/package.texi | 7 +++++++
>  1 file changed, 7 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/doc/lispref/package.texi b/doc/lispref/package.texi
> index 2952e7dfcfc..ce29b4be72a 100644
> --- a/doc/lispref/package.texi
> +++ b/doc/lispref/package.texi
> @@ -284,6 +284,13 @@ Multi-file Packages
>    (expand-file-name file superfrobnicator-base))
>  @end smallexample
>
> +  If your project contains files that you don't wish to distribute to
> +users (e.g.@: regression tests), you can add them to an
> +@file{.elpaignore} file.  In this file, each line lists a file or
> +wildcard matching files to ignore when producing your package's tar
> +file on ELPA.  (ELPA will pass this file to @command{tar} with the
> +@code{-X} option.)
> +
>  @node Package Archives
>  @section Creating and Maintaining Package Archives
>  @cindex package archive