"Go to file" dialog ("t" keyboard shortcut) should NOT hide the files from "build" folder

[jakub-g]

Issue

In the "Go to file" dialog (t keyboard shortcut), contents of /build folder are never displayed.
This is bad. It should be displayed, or be language-dependent, or be repo-configurable

Explanation

The assumption is that build folder is a derived folder with build artifacts (this is something GH support wrote to me years ago, and seems to still be the case).

This assumption maybe holds in Java, but does not hold in many other languages.

For example, in JavaScript world, the customary folder for derived build artifacts is dist, and build folder often contains scripts meant for building the repository. FWIW, contents of dist folder are displayed in jump to file! (notice the contradiction).

So the Java-specific assumption is adding its weight on all repositories, and is not configurable.

I worked with many JS repositories where this was happening, and it's very frustrating. OTOH, renaming the directory just for GH to be happy (while making history harder to navigate due to massive rename) is something that most people don't want to do (partly because GitHub UI for file history does not follow renames).

Curiously, the contents of /build folder are indexed (searching through contents finds the files)

Test

Go to https://github.com/jakub-g/github-test
Note the dist/dist.txt file
Note the build/quux.txt file

Now go to https://github.com/jakub-g/github-test/find/main
Note the dist/dist.txt file
Note lack of build/quux.txt file

Possible solution

I understand this is probably because /build in Java world can contain hundreds of files and basically duplicate every file in repo.

But IMO the solution to this problem should not be a naive hardcoded "block everything".

Example solution could be something like .github/DERIVED.txt config file which lists patterns to block.
When the repo is mainly-Java and this file is missing, there could be an heuristic enabled to block build, but if config file exists, it takes over.

[jakub-g]

This has been shipped via github/docs@37df8ea

The solution is to add the following to .gitattributes:

build/** linguist-generated=false

See https://docs.github.com/en/search-github/searching-on-github/finding-files-on-github