It has nothing to do with metapackages.
When releasing a repository, which contains one or more packages which may or may not be metapackages, you can create a file in the master branch which starts with the track name and has the extension .ignored. So if you are running the track hydro, then any packages (separated by whitespace) in the hydro.ignored file in the master branch will be ignored.
When being ignored a package will not have release branches or debian branches generated and it will not be included in the automatically generated diff nor the pull request.
The explicitly ignored packages will be noted in the README.md summary on the master branch of the repository.
Like this:
https://github.com/wjwwood/roscpp_core-release#roscpp_core---0315-5
Edit by @130s
The link to wjwwood/roscpp_core-release above no longer exists. This in ros-gbp/ros_comm-release might be another good example.
Originally posted by William with karma: 17335 on 2013-07-03
This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site
Post score: 3
Original comments
Comment by 130s on 2013-07-03:
Just to make sure, is master branch replaced (eg. with the default branch on my github repo) when no master branch exists?
Comment by William on 2013-07-03:
No... this is not your upstream repository. This is the release repository. Bloom places all of its configurations on the master branch. There is no way to change this.
Comment by 130s on 2013-07-03:
I see. One more thing; Are multiple packages separated by whitespace? In your example they look 1 pkg per line
Comment by William on 2013-07-03:
Line endings are whitespace.
Comment by kmhallen on 2016-09-15:
William's link no-longer works, so here is another example:
https://github.com/dillenberger/pepperl_fuchs
https://github.com/dillenberger/pepperl_fuchs-release
