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

From: Jim Porter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2023 21:56:38 -0700

X-Debbugs-Cc: [email-masked]

 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.

From a5dc5f63003aea4bda4f382ec46c0556edb14f1a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jim Porter <[email-masked]>
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
-- 
2.25.1