[hakre]

Good point, never had a problem to place the configuration files where they belong to, be it in the project root or not, until I figured it out. That's what software configuration management is for, and SCM is obviously in place (given this is a reported issue on Github).

And if you allow me to build on the "Finally" note in your comment with a personal note:

Some _human readable_ content belongs into the root as well, e.g. a read-me, information under which conditions the code can be used (copying info) and similar, the important stuff. Otherwise it would mean it only needs to be machine read-able (which can be fine, too, especially for pure configuration management, still though a repository will most likely checked out by a human from time to time).

Uncle Bob raises this question from time to time: When you checkout a repository and look into the tree, what do you see?

The root is always an opportunity to show the projects' birds-view.

[ayroblu]

I disagree with regards to _human readable_ content. We put "README"'s in the project root because it's configuration for most git repo viewer's e.g. GitHub. If GitHub didn't have this auto nice formatting, I probably wouldn't add it, preferring a docs dir (for the general case). Licenses is awkward, it's kinda config too really

[hakre]

Yes, that's why humans can read it on Github. Many people put even ASCII art into it (and restrain from actual HTML tags despite those are just fine in Markdown). So actually no disagreement from my side on that one, at least for me. Your mileage may vary.

Oh what a reminiscence to back then when exchanging software on floppy disks, and when the !readme.txt not written in your language, you found the "link" to the file in your "docs" folder often at the very top.

Or you just found the docs folder, in case no readme there.

Btw., this works on Github, too. The docs folder is normally directly visible above the fold while the read-me might not, especially when there is a long list of files which OP put on topic.