[Rd] Hidden files in source packages

[Prof Brian Ripley]

R-devel has been warning for some time about hidden files (in the Unix 
sense, starting with a period) in source packages.   We could get R CMD 
build and the CRAN incoming scripts to remove these *if* we knew that 
they were never needed.

It seems clear that

.Rapp.history
.Rhistory
.Rbuildindex.xxxxx
inst/doc/.build.timestamp

are R leftovers,

._.DS_store

is from an Apple filesystem and

.tex .log .aux .pdf .png

are junk (as file names, not extensions).

However, is there ever any reason for any of

.Renviron
.Rprofile
.Rproj.user
.backups
.cvsignore
.cproject
.directory
.dropbox
.exrc
.gdb.history
.gitattributes
.gitignore
.gitmodules
.hgignore
.hqtags
.htaccess
.latex2html-init
.project
.seed
.settings

to be in a source package tarball?  (For some of these it is not clear 
where they come from since there are multiple possible origins.)

If you know of a reason to retain any of these, please let 
CRAN at r-project.org know (with 'Hidden files' in the subject line).

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595