gh-36511: Exclude symlinks from vscode search config via glob pattern
    
As requested in
#36380 (comment) and
cherry-picked from there.

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URL: #36511
Reported by: Matthias Köppe
Reviewer(s): Tobias Diez

Author: Release Manager

.vscode/settings.json

@@ -8,13 +8,14 @@
         "src/**/*.so": true
     },
     "search.exclude": {
-        "build/pkgs/sagemath_categories/src": true,
-        "build/pkgs/sagemath_objects/src": true,
-        "build/pkgs/sagelib/src": true,
-        "pkgs/sage-conf_pypi/sage_root/build": true,
-        "pkgs/sagemath-categories/sage": true,
-        "pkgs/sagemath-objects/sage": true,
-        "pkgs/sagemath-standard/sage": true
+        // Exclude symbolic links into SAGE_ROOT/pkgs/
+        "build/pkgs/*/src": true,
+        // Exclude symbolic links into SAGE_ROOT/src/
+        "pkgs/sage-conf_conda/sage_root": true,
+        "pkgs/sage-conf_pypi/sage_root": true,
+        "pkgs/sage-docbuild/sage_docbuild": true,
+        "pkgs/sage-setup/sage_setup": true,
+        "pkgs/sagemath-*/sage": true
     },
     "python.testing.pytestEnabled": true,
     "python.testing.pytestArgs": [

src/doc/en/developer/packaging_sage_library.rst

@@ -190,9 +190,6 @@ The technique of using symbolic links pointing into ``SAGE_ROOT/src``
 has allowed the modularization effort to keep the ``SAGE_ROOT/src``
 tree monolithic: Modularization has been happening behind the scenes
 and will not change where Sage developers find the source files.
-When adding a new distribution package that uses a symbolic link pointing into
-``SAGE_ROOT/src``, please update ``search.exclude`` in
-``SAGE_ROOT/.vscode/settings.json``.
 
 Some of these files may actually be generated from source files with suffix ``.m4`` by the
 ``SAGE_ROOT/bootstrap`` script via the ``m4`` macro processor.