diff --git a/.cargo/config.toml b/.cargo/config.toml
index 0e9cb46b2..9f639eaf6 100644
--- a/.cargo/config.toml
+++ b/.cargo/config.toml
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+# This file is _not_ included in the tarballs for now
+# Binary builds on Linux packaging infrastructure need to overwrite it to make `cargo vendor` work
+# Releases and development builds made using OBS/Launchpad will _not_ reflect the contents of this
+# file
+
 [resolver]
 # Make cargo 1.84+ respect MSRV (rust-version in Cargo.toml)
 incompatible-rust-versions = "fallback"
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
index 93ae94673..5328a94eb 100644
--- a/.gitattributes
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -21,6 +21,8 @@
 /.github/* export-ignore
 /.builds export-ignore
 /.builds/* export-ignore
+# to make cargo vendor work correctly
+/.cargo/config.toml
 
 # for linguist; let github identify our project as C++ instead of C due to pcre2
 pcre2/** linguist-vendored