I'm reading this a bit late, but...
We (Xorg) found that ignoring:
*~ *.bak *.patch
in addition to the files generated by building is very helpful.
We do use git tag and git describe in the make dist process, as
well as git log >ChangeLog. That may be relevant; avoiding git
describe's dirty designation is important when using it in that
fashion. But it helps to be able to run git add --all cleanly.
I understand that other git users have similar experience.
-JimC
--
James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com> OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6