GitHub releases are generated from git archive and we can use the .gitattributes file to exclude files. I think there's a good case to be made that the tarball should omit "developer" files so it's as small and focused as possible.

Candidates for inclusion:

• /.* – exclude all dot files, including .evergreen, .gitignore, .travis.yml etc.
• /appveyor.yml – just like excluding .travis.yml
• /docs – exclude all the hugo source files and HTML template for the docs site
• /etc – exclude all these development helpers

The downside of removing things like docs and etc is that some developer build targets will be broken, but I don't think that will have an impact on the typical user. Anyone who wants a "developer's view" of the code should clone the repo.