Problem

Every Rust project using git requires a .gitignore file with the content /target. This contributes to a cluttered project directory.

Proposed Solution

Whenever cargo creates the target directory, it should also create a file target/.gitignore with the content * to ensure the directory ignores itself. That way, a top-level .gitignore file that's checked into version control can be avoided completely in many cases.

Notes

This is part of #11548, which also proposes that cargo doesn't generate the top-level .gitignore file anymore. As mentioned in this comment, that should only be done much later (if at all) for backwards-compatibility reasons.