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Gitlab default branch name changes to main

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Re: Gitlab default branch name changes to main

#111

I wonder if a master's degree is also offensive.

Lol, are we mains graduate now ?

Master agumonkey, (oops) how would you like to pay your student loans for that Masters degree? (oops.)

Would you like to pay by Mastercard? (oops.)

Re: Gitlab default branch name changes to main

#112
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who believes that "master" is some kind of slur and takes the opportunity to take offense over it is not someone you want causing problems in your organization.

“I am personally not offended by this, therefore anyone that is offended is a problem to be removed” People have different life experiences and backgrounds. The cost to you of renaming is near zero, if you’re the one loudly opposing something that makes your coworkers more comfortable then you’re the one causing problems in the organisation.

I have yet to hear of anyone being actually offended by this.

> The cost to you of renaming is near zero

Not true. I just had to update a load of tests for a git client I'm working on that assume the default branch name is `master` (I wrote them before this mess), and now I have to configure Git on every system I use to use a default name of master. It's not a huge pain, sure, but it isn't nothing and I don't get any benefit from it either.

Re: Gitlab default branch name changes to main

#113
post #6

I think the default branch name change has been good for the ecosystem; “master” didn’t always make sense for whatever workflow was used, and it was hardcoded all over a bunch of tooling. I think “main” makes more sense, regardless of politics, and this encouraged a lot of software to make the default branch configurable.

> it was hardcoded all over a bunch of tooling

But that was fine because everyone used it. I agree "main" would have made more sense from the start, but changing it now is just a waste of effort and makes things more difficult (e.g. before you could have hard-coded "master" but now you have to figure out if it is "master" or "main").

Re: Gitlab default branch name changes to main

#114
post #93
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not unfortunate at all. This is something that only has an impact when you create a brand new git repo,which is relatively rare. When that happened, you could just rename the original master branch. Nevertheless, git added support for this option less than a year ago. https://github.blog/2020-07-27-highlights-from-git-2-28/#int...

> This is something that only has an impact when you create a brand new git repo,which is relatively rare. What a strange thing to claim, when both this thread and the original post talk about things that need to update based on the change, such as CI/CD scripts, git aliases, and so on. > Nevertheless, git added support for this option less than a year ago. Yes, I'm just saying it's strange that git added support to…

> What a strange thing to claim, when both this thread and the original post talk about things that need to update based on the change, such as CI/CD scripts, git aliases, and so on.

I believe I've said something that's easy to understand, at least without bad faith.

Git end users create repos only rarely, but creating preconfigured Git repos is gitlab's business. This discussion is about gitlab's announcement. Do you have a hard time understanding any of this?

> Yes, I'm just saying it's strange that git added support to customize the name, but then didn't add a way to ask it what it's configured to, given that things will depend on knowing what that name is.

It's called software development best practices, particularly adding changes in a backward-compatible way so that not to change the expected behavior.

Re: Gitlab default branch name changes to main

#116
post #48

I would like to point out that it's perfectly OK to have master/slave relations between computers, hard disks and git branches. The only place where it's problematic is between humans. Perhaps we would do well to remember that words can have different meanings in different contexts. It's nice to try to be considerate of people who are sensitive to certain issues, but at the same time they would do well to limit their…

> Perhaps we would do well to remember that words can have different meanings in different contexts.

I’m afraid this idea is rapidly becoming deprecated - now if a word has multiple meanings, we pick whichever one is most offensive and forget the others

(No judgement on whether that’s a good thing or not, I see pros and cons)

Re: Gitlab default branch name changes to main

#117
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I am personally not offended by this, therefore anyone that is offended is a problem to be removed” People have different life experiences and backgrounds. The cost to you of renaming is near zero, if you’re the one loudly opposing something that makes your coworkers more comfortable then you’re the one causing problems in the organisation.

I have yet to hear of anyone being actually offended by this. > The cost to you of renaming is near zero Not true. I just had to update a load of tests for a git client I'm working on that assume the default branch name is `master` (I wrote them before this mess), and now I have to configure Git on every system I use to use a default name of master. It's not a huge pain, sure, but it isn't nothing and I don't get any…

Sounds like a flaw in your git client. It was always possible to change the default branch name, so hardcoding master was never right. You’re far from alone in making that assumption though! The good news is this makes everyone’s git tools more resilient.

> It’s not a huge pain, sure, but it isn’t nothing and I don’t get any benefit from it either

The entire notion here is accommodating people. It doesn’t benefit you personally but it does benefit others. And it’s not a huge pain. At a certain point we’re expending more energy debating doing this than if everyone just did it and moved on with their lives.

Re: Gitlab default branch name changes to main

#118
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, and gits is not the same one as a slave master.

Turns out it is: > This term came from Bitkeeper, a predecessor to Git. Bitkeeper referred to the source of truth as the "master repository" and other copies as "slave repositories".

I'm not sure about the accuracy of this quote. In git world branch names have nothing to do with repositories. If anything, the "source of truth" repository is generally called "origin".

Re: Gitlab default branch name changes to main

#119

Either (1) Default name doesn't have inherent value; therefore, changing the default isn't a big deal (low downside), even if the upside is low (2) "master" is for some reason a better name than "main" I never see the people complaining about this stuff spelling out a reason why it's a bad idea to change (2), and am forced to conclude that we are in scenario (1). It seems to me that opinion is much more divided on th…

I don't know why you've missed the obvious:

(3) "master" is a bit worse than "main" but changing it now is annoying.

It's like how electrons are negative or an inch isn't exactly 25mm or Pi is half of full turn instead of just a full turn, etc. They all could have defined better but changing them now would be more trouble than it's worth.

> the downside is virtually non-existent, who cares?

Because a) it isn't virtually non-existent. It means you have to configure another thing on all systems you use git on, it means pretty much all existing tutorials are now wrong, and it means all scripts that assume `master` (a pretty reasonable assumption!) are now broken.

And b) it's the principle of the thing! People don't want SJWs to win the argument.

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