(stow.info)Motivation For Ignore Lists

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4.1 Motivation For Ignore Lists
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In many situations, there will exist files under the package
directories which it would be undesirable to stow into the target
directory.  For example, files related version control such as
`.gitignore', `CVS', `*,v' (RCS files) should typically not have
symlinks from the target tree pointing to them.  Also there may be
files or directories relating to the build of the package which are not
needed at run-time.

   In these cases, it can be rather cumbersome to specify a `--ignore'
parameter for each file or directory to be ignored.  This could be
worked around by ensuring the existence of `~/.stowrc' containing
multiple `--ignore' lines, or if a different set of files/directories
should be ignored depending on which stow package is involved, a
`.stowrc' file for each stow package, but this would require the user
to ensure that they were in the correct directory before invoking stow,
which would be tedious and error-prone.  Furthermore, since Stow shifts
parameters from `.stowrc' onto ARGV at run-time, it could clutter up
the process table with excessively long parameter lists, or even worse,
exceed the operating system's limit for process arguments.

   Therefore in addition to `--ignore' parameters, Stow provides a way
to specify lists of files and directories to ignore.