Stops committing built dist/ artifacts on v0.x, mirroring #7002 on v1.x. CI builds dist before tests and publish, so npm consumers are unaffected. Bower removal is bundled in here because bower installs directly from the git tree, so dropping committed dist/ would otherwise break bower install axios; on v1.x this cleanup lives in a separate PR (#10746). Bower has been deprecated since 2017 with its last release in 2021, so coupling the two changes is low risk.

Summary by cubic

Stop committing built artifacts in dist/ on v0.x and remove bower support. Keeps the repo clean and avoids stale bundles; npm installs are unaffected.

Description

• Summary of changes

  • Add dist/ to .gitignore; remove committed dist/ files.
  • Remove bower.json and the Grunt package2bower task.
  • Update docs to drop bower instructions and adjust AMD example path.
  • Clean up .npmignore and CONTRIBUTING.md.

• Reasoning

  • CI builds bundles before tests and publish, so npm consumers are unaffected.
  • bower installs from the git tree; without committed dist/ it would break, so we remove bower.
  • bower is deprecated; users should use npm/yarn/pnpm or a CDN.

• Additional context

  • Aligns v0.x with the v1.x workflow.
  • If you installed via bower or from git, switch to npm or a CDN.

Docs

• README: remove bower install section.
• UPGRADE_GUIDE: update AMD example to use require(['axios/dist/axios']).
• CONTRIBUTING: remove outdated note about committing dist/.

Testing

• No test changes.
• No new tests needed; this is build/doc-only.
• CI already builds bundles before tests/publish; ensure release artifacts still include dist/ as part of the publish step.

^{Written for commit 65574e5. Summary will update on new commits.}