🩹 [Patch]: Local test runs no longer leave a coverage report to commit by accident

[Marius Storhaug (MariusStorhaug)]

A local test run no longer leaves an untracked file that gets committed by accident. Running Pester with code coverage writes coverage.xml into the working directory, and nothing ignored it, so the report showed up in git status and was easy to stage without noticing.

Fixed: the Pester coverage report stays out of commits

.gitignore now ignores coverage.xml. Contributors running the test suite locally get a clean git status afterwards, and the report cannot be committed by a git add -A.

Nothing about how coverage is produced or published changes. CI still generates and uploads the report as a build artifact; this only stops the local copy from being tracked.

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Technical details

Found in the wild, not hypothetically. PSModule/CasingStyle#22 adds a 126-line JaCoCo coverage.xml at the repository root alongside its intended changes — the signature of a local Pester run followed by git add -A.

It is accidental, not a convention. gh search code --owner PSModule --filename coverage.xml returns nothing across all 96 repositories in the organization, so no repository tracks one deliberately. CasingStyle would have been the first.

Why the file lands at the root. Pester writes its coverage report to the working directory by default, which is the repository root for a local run. The existing outputs/* rule covers the framework's own build output, but the coverage report is not written there.

Why this belongs in the template — and what it does not do. The template is the source every new module repository is created from, so fixing it here is what stops the gap being reproduced. All 58 repositories carrying Type: Module have the same gap today, and this pull request does not reach any of them.

An earlier revision of this description claimed it would, via the SubscribeTo custom property. That claim was wrong and is retracted. Checked afterwards, and the correction is worth stating plainly because it changes what this pull request is worth:

Check	Result
Module repositories with SubscribeTo set	1 of 58 (PSModule/GitHub, value Custom Instructions, License, Prompts)
Module repositories subscribed to gitignore	0 of 58
The only consumer of SubscribeTo, anywhere	PSModule/Distributor/scripts/Sync-Files.ps1 — its workflow is disabled_inactivity, last ran 2026-06-05, and succeeded on only 3 of 76 runs ever
Contents of MSXOrg/Custo, the documented successor runtime	LICENSE and a two-line README.md

So the opt-in is valid and documented, its only engine has been switched off since June, and the documented successor is a stub. (An earlier revision of this table said no implementation existed — that was a search scoped to the wrong organization, corrected on PSModule/docs#109.) This pull request therefore fixes the template only; existing repositories keep the gap until distribution actually runs, which is tracked in PSModule/docs#63 and the prerequisite work linked from it. Fixing only one repository would still leave the trap in the template, which is the argument for landing this regardless.

Scope. One rule and a comment explaining what writes the file. Deliberately not a wider .gitignore review, and deliberately not *.xml — module repositories legitimately track XML, and a broad glob would silently ignore files that belong in version control.

Kept separate from #42. That pull request corrects documentation links in the community files. This one changes build hygiene. They share no lines and merge in either order.

Standards and framework alignment.

Changed surface	Standards checked	Framework docs checked	Result
.gitignore	None applicable — no ecosystem standard covers ignore rules	Repository standard — names .gitignore as a managed file type, so the template is the correct source. The page describes the distribution runtime in the present tense; that overstatement is reported separately, not resolved here	Aligned

Issue convergence sweep. Scope: open issues in this repository and in PSModule/docs concerning repository hygiene or the managed file set. Nothing is fully satisfied by this diff. PSModule/docs#36, on reviewing .gitattributes for cross-platform development, is adjacent but concerns a different file and is untouched.

Relevant issues (or links)

• ⚙️ [Maintenance]: CasingStyle meets the current repository standard and runs on Process-PSModule v6 CasingStyle#22 — where the untracked report surfaced
• Distribute mandatory repo files (CONTRIBUTING, AGENTS, CLAUDE, copilot-instructions) via Distributor docs#63 — distributing the managed file set, which is how this reaches existing repositories

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No Significant Changes Detected

This PR does not contain changes to files that would trigger a new release:

Pattern	Description
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^README\.md$	Matches files where path matches this pattern

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Super-linter summary

Language	Validation result
CHECKOV	Pass ✅
GITHUB_ACTIONS	Pass ✅
GITLEAKS	Pass ✅
GIT_MERGE_CONFLICT_MARKERS	Pass ✅
MARKDOWN	Pass ✅
NATURAL_LANGUAGE	Pass ✅
POWERSHELL	Pass ✅
PRE_COMMIT	Pass ✅
SPELL_CODESPELL	Pass ✅
TRIVY	Pass ✅
YAML	Pass ✅

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