One common practice is to decide which files you will need to publish on the site, and then include these files in your DVCS. If you eventually accept the build / continuous integration server, it will check your code from your repository, run tests on it, compile it, and publish it to the test / production server. To do this, you will need to specify all the necessary files.
You should not include unnecessary files that can change often, but do not mean anything. For the ASP.NET world, they include .suo, .user, resharper files. If you have a folder with downloaded files, you can exclude this, so the files you are testing are not included. Basically, something like that.
Explanation
Regarding the uploaded files folder. If the site supports user uploading of files, and they are stored inside the site’s directory, say, in the “Uploads” folder, you would like to exclude such a folder from the source control. This is just an example of what you would not want to include. During testing, you would check the upload of files to your site, but you certainly would not want these test downloads to be published for production, so do not use them for version control.
Michael La Voie
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