Add support for custom AL-Go system files

[mazhelez]

Discussed in #1897

^{Originally posted by jwikman September 3, 2025}
In PR #853 there was a setting called customALGoSystemFiles, which was very promising feature.

Now that we're on v7.3 I was about to check this feature out, but I couldn't find a trace of it! Digging into #853, I can see that I hadn't dreamt about it, but it was there before the summer.

I would love to be able to transfer some .md files via our custom template. Eg. .github\copilot.instructions.md, some *.instructions.md files in a subfolder, AGENTS.md files, etc.

customALGoSystemFiles was a bit more advanced than our needs, since we could put the file inside the custom template repo - we just need a way to configure which files should be included or not when updating AL-Go System Files.

So, any plans to implement that kind of feature? Would you accept a PR on it? (After agreeing on scope and design)

Internal work item: AB#606409

[jwikman]

@mazhelez any details that you would like to share on this? Like, what features do you plan to support? 🙂

[mazhelez]

Hey @jwikman

This part is I thought of trying out:

1. Add patterns to $checkfiles
2. Add delete patterns to the $checkfiles logic
3. Add exclude patterns to the $checkfiles logic so we could add all files from a folder, but exclude some of them
4. Set that a pattern should be applied recursively in subfolders

What will not be supported for now is fetching files from outside the custom template repo.

[jwikman]

That sounds wonderful! 👍
Now that we have the custom template, I think that we can achieve a lot through that.

Fetching files from whatever place is something completely different, IMO. (Still useful, though)

[jwikman]

Hey @mazhelez, sorry for spamming you today!

Any progress on this?
Anything we could do to help?

This feature would make us much more efficient.

[mazhelez]

Yes, there is progress. Writing tests at the moment. Or more accurately, fighting with GitHub Copilot to write the tests for me.
I'll push a branch shortly.

[jwikman]

Hahaha, sometimes I've found myself spending more time on fighting with Copilot to write something for me, than it would take for me to write it myself in the first place! 😂

But then again, sometimes Copilot is brilliant!

Looking forward to this one! Let me know when there is something available that I can test.