Include only relevant documents into released archives

[AxelNennker]

Problem description
Currently the released archive files (zip and tar.gz) contain folders like Meeting Minutes.

Expected action

• Include only information relevant to the release into the archives.
• if possible, automatically add direct links to the most relevant documents on the release page
  e.g. direct link to released yaml file
  e.g. direct link to released ICM Security and Interoperability document

Additional context
Example NumberVerification ZIP-file contents:

Example ICM ZIP-file contents:

[hdamker]

@AxelNennker

The Source Archives are automatically created by GitHub (using git archive) and include the complete repository content at the tagged commit. GitHub does not provide a way to disable or customize the automatically generated source code archives. These archives will always be created and cannot be removed, even manually. It is possible to add additional release assets (even automatically, e.g. by a GitHub action which is triggered by a created release).

But it is possible to exclude specific directories and files from them using Git attributes. This is accomplished through the .gitattributes file with the export-ignore attribute.

I wouldn't exclude too many files from the archives, but to exclude the old MeetingMinutes there are two options:

Option1 (Clean-up): Delete the minutes from the repository and change the link within the wiki which points to the old minutes instead to main to the release tag which followed the migration of meeting minutes into the wiki. With that they are still accessible.

Option2 (exclude only from archives): commit a file .gitattributes to the repository which contains:

.gitattributes export-ignore
/documentation/MeetingMinutes export-ignore

See https://github.com/hdamker/NumberVerification/blob/test/.gitattributes and the resulting Zipfile in https://github.com/hdamker/NumberVerification/releases/tag/test

Option 1 would result in cleaner repositories, but would break direct links to old meeting minutes. Option 2 would impact only future releases (e.g. the M4 public).

[hdamker]

• if possible, automatically add direct links to the most relevant documents on the release page
  e.g. direct link to released yaml file
  e.g. direct link to released ICM Security and Interoperability document

That is a different issue than the release archives. Just short: Currently that can be achieved manually by adding the links within the CHANGELOG entry of the release (as we create releases by copying this content into the release notes). See https://github.com/camaraproject/Commonalities/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md as example how it could look like for ICM. For API Repositories we have this by default, have a look: https://github.com/camaraproject/QualityOnDemand/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md#r31

[tanjadegroot]

Concluding remark to close the discussion:

There are several options to clean up the repositories:

1. delete the old files e.g. unused README.md files in subfolders, API documentation / testing folders from Working Group repos, old meeting minutes, etc.
2. when doing a github release, exclude certain folders by using the .gitattributes feature (see above)

the decision is up to the Sub Project / Working Group