How to manage IDE project files on a forked repository

Question

I recently forked a Git repository, and locally I created a project in my IDE to compile with.

My IDE creates a variety of artifacts that I would like to keep saved somewhere. The obvious place would be in the VCS. If I add these files then they will be in the history for my fork. If i want send a pull request to merge upstream I wouldn't want these files included.

What would be a recommended workflow for managing these changes that I would never want to go upstream.

Answer 1

Structure your project so that it sits in a directory (and builds all files) outside of the source directory (such as [project root]/build) and exclude that directory in .gitignore.

This is the process that CMake uses (see "out-of-source builds" in their docs). Of course, you could always introduce yourself to CMake and build it into the project's pipeline. I'm sure the authors would love you for it ;)