Introduce .gitattributes in favor of .distignore

[mitogh]

Feature Description

The current release zips created by GH everytime a new tag is created includes files that are not part of the release, for example:

• https://github.com/WordPress/performance/archive/refs/tags/1.0.0-beta.1.zip

Contains tests and configuration files, non required for testing or usage of the plugin.

The deploy action would use either:

• .disignore
• .gitattributes

To exclude files that are going to be deployed so we can safely move .disignore to .gitattributes one of the things to consider is when moving the content into .gitattributes is the fact that the setting export-ignore should be added after each file for example:

/.git export-ignore
/node_modules export-ignore

export-ignore

Files and directories with the attribute export-ignore won’t be added to archive files.

Additional parameters.

[jeffpaul]

Will also want to make sure that README.md gets added to either file as that's currently being published to WP.org (alongside the more useful readme.txt file), see: https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/performance-lab/trunk/README.md

[felixarntz]

@mitogh Why should we be using .gitattributes over .distignore? I'm not sure I see the benefits of that.

@jeffpaul Great catch, README.md should definitely be excluded as well.

[mitogh]

Why should we be using .gitattributes over .distignore? I'm not sure I see the benefits of that.

ZIPs created from a release tag contains non required files:

• https://github.com/WordPress/performance/archive/refs/tags/1.0.0-beta.1.zip

Benefits

• When using gitattributes those files won't be included on the created file instead.
• Zip from the release tag would match closely the ZIP from WP.org instead
• gitattributes works for the WP release action so we get both benefits in both areas.

[felixarntz]

@mitogh Good point, that makes sense to me.

So as a summary what needs to be done here:

• Migrate the current .distignore to a .gitattributes file (using export-ignore, see Introduce .gitattributes in favor of .distignore #217 (comment)).
• Include README.md in that file so that it is excluded from ZIP files as well.