Reproducing the issue locally, when I run 'make rpm' and 'git status' the following files are listed: modified: ChangeLog modified: po/de_DE.po modified: po/en_US.po modified: po/es_ES.po modified: po/fr_FR.po modified: po/it_IT.po modified: po/ja_JP.po modified: po/kimchi.pot modified: po/ko_KR.po modified: po/pt_BR.po modified: po/ru_RU.po modified: po/zh_CN.po modified: po/zh_TW.po To solve that problem, there are two possible solutions: 1- Files changed at runtime will have the following format: - For example: ChangeLog, I will keep a tracked one at ChangeLog.am, and the file generate by make command, ChangeLog, will not be tracked (and be added to .gitignore). 2- include following command to Makefile.am: git clean -df & git reset --hard, to remove untracked files from the working tree and to revert files changes. I would like to make sure which one (or any other solution) would be the best in this case and why not use any of them. Thanks, Bianca