Ah the war on words. Soon (or here already?) the way you speak will he uses to determine your tribal membership.
GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
71–80 of 251 posts
Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
#72I guess now the whole master/slave tech should be renamed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)
I'm a little confused about why GitHub is doing this. The master/slave thing I get - there's a direct link to actual slavery there, and it can be replaced with terms like leader/follower or primary/replica fairly easily. But the "master" branch in Git doesn't have a slave branch. It's a master from which copies are made (as in a "master recording"), which is a different sense of the word.
Bitkeeper had master/slave repositories, and that's where git's use of the word master came from.
Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing about those terms are racist. What’s next, renaming the color “black”?
No, but I've heard a lot of people saying we should stop using "dark" and "black" in association with evil, e.g. black magic or dark thoughts. I'm not saying it's the right or wrong thing to do.
I would guess that such associations have long existed, including in places where most people have dark skin, and are not based in the idea of “race”.
Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
#74When they ask you what virtue signalling is, show them this.
It's not. This is more like a swear word. No one would expect that calling it the "fuck" branch would be OK. Just because more people are OK with "master" doesn't change the fact that it bothers other people who are just trying to code. This isn't hard to understand.
Well, "git" is a swear word in British English.
"a foolish or worthless person", per https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/git
Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
#75When they ask you what virtue signalling is, show them this.
It's not. This is more like a swear word. No one would expect that calling it the "fuck" branch would be OK. Just because more people are OK with "master" doesn't change the fact that it bothers other people who are just trying to code. This isn't hard to understand.
Interesting. When Alfred Pennyworth calls Batman "master Bruce" he is actually badmouthing him. TIL
Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
#76One day we might find historical record of a slave owner holding "main" as a title. Any terminology that implies hierarchy can be construed by social justice to represent a slavery reference.
In reality, they should just drop this, or call the branch "non_feature", better yet "non_feature_not_that_there_is_anything_wrong_with_being_a_feature"
Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
#77I always understood a VCS “master” branch to be in reference to “master” records / the “mastering” process of audio mixing, which in turn is a use of a sense of the verb “to master” akin to “to master one’s courage”—not conveying dominance, but rather the reaching of an apex in skill. If you’re in the market for a replacement that keeps the metaphorical power, though, I might suggest having a “mother” branch. “Mother…
It’s not. It comes from master/slave, and I’m desperately trying to find the mailing-list email where someone (I wanna say on a BSD mailing list, but it could be anything tbh) traces the etymology backwards through different VCS branches until we get to one where the concepts are clearly “master/slave”. If anybody has the link handy I’d really appreciate it.
Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
#78I know this is going to be a PC war, but, I'm curious how they technically intend to do this. Is "main" just going to be a visual alias on the site? If so that will be really confusing if the branch is still technically called "master" and needs to be referred to that way in the command line. If they intend to actually rename the branches I don't know how they can do that without breaking all sorts of scripts and bui…
They're presumably just changing the default name of the default branch for new repositories created via github.
Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
#79I guess now the whole master/slave tech should be renamed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)
I'm a little confused about why GitHub is doing this. The master/slave thing I get - there's a direct link to actual slavery there, and it can be replaced with terms like leader/follower or primary/replica fairly easily. But the "master" branch in Git doesn't have a slave branch. It's a master from which copies are made (as in a "master recording"), which is a different sense of the word.
This tweet seems to have researched otherwise - that master/slave originated from bit keeper: https://twitter.com/tobie/status/1270290278029631489?s=21
Re: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
#80how are we going to call the master branch in git?
In git? Master.
This is about Github.