diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..82c834a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2025 The meson-python developers
+#
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
+
+# These test files contain symlinks to outside the repo (hence invalid - on
+# purpose) so exclude them to prevent warnings. See gh-728 for context.
+tests/packages/symlinks/baz.py export-ignore
+tests/packages/symlinks/qux.py export-ignore
diff --git a/tests/packages/symlinks/meson.build b/tests/packages/symlinks/meson.build
index b994b044..67136ad8 100644
--- a/tests/packages/symlinks/meson.build
+++ b/tests/packages/symlinks/meson.build
@@ -6,6 +6,9 @@ project('symlinks')
 
 py = import('python').find_installation()
 
+# Note that `baz.py` and `qux.py`, which contain symlinks to outside the repo
+# (unsupported), are present in the git repo but won't be present in a
+# meson-python sdist (see gh-747).
 py.install_sources(
     '__init__.py',
     'submodule/__init__.py',