what make-dist should include [was Re: Emacs pretest 26.1.91 is out]

[Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>]

Paul Eggert wrote:

> On 1/10/19 5:03 PM, Glenn Morris wrote:
>> The current philosophy is "omit things that aren't relevant".
>
> Sure, but the question is "What's relevant?" and the answer depends on
> the audience. For example, .gitignore is relevant to anybody who
> checks a tarball's files into a fresh Git repository,

(and then builds in place)

> and msdos/autogen is relevant to anybody who does serious development
> on MS-DOS regardless of whether they're using Git.

I doubt such people exist, for either example.

I see zero practical advantages to a switch to a "distribute everything"
approach (which Emacs has never done, and nor when I check do eg tar,
texinfo, coreutils); unless it will drastically simplify make-dist and
avoid problems like the one fixed in 021f34b. If it does then I am all
for it. :)