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New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

zdnet.com

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Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#41

Post by crocodiletears »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #3

This is a tiny change that has no substantial negative effect on anyone’s life. If they’d renamed “pull requests” to “merge requests” no one would care, at all. Let’s please not make a big deal out of it.

It's a change of territory in what amounts to cultural trench warfare. Partisans are constantly antfucking over what is and isn't appropriate terminology, or what constitutes a thinly veiled existential threat.

The change's symbolic significance vastly outweighs its immediate consequence, and naturally people will respond to it within the context it's been made.

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#42

Post by userbinator »

scottmsul wrote: post #31
jakelazaroff wrote: post #3

This is a tiny change that has no substantial negative effect on anyone’s life. If they’d renamed “pull requests” to “merge requests” no one would care, at all. Let’s please not make a big deal out of it.

I disagree. Renaming "pull requests" to "merge requests" isn't politically motivated, whereas this is a top-down change from political activists. I'm worried that society might go down a path where people can't push back out of fear of one's career or safety.

Very related article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16454645

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#43

Post by tehlike »

madsmith wrote: post #29
unwoundmouse wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, i highly doubt any developer black or not ever looked and said “wow this master branch naming really makes me feel oppressed.” If this is you, please correct me. However, i do know lots of developers have bash scripts, terminal aliases, python workers that use the “master” terminology that will need to be changed. This seems like an absurd and unnecessary change to me, causing more net damage than benefit.…

As a black developer... this all just makes me a little sad. Terms like master/slave or whitelist/blacklist are common parlance and this attempt to remove these phrases for less well understood phrases just seems like an attempt to whitewash history for little to no gain. I'm a firm believer that language is dynamic and the meaning of words is the meanings we currently associate to them.

And it's all very us centric too.

In my native language, we have something called "black notebook" which is essentially a blacklist. It has nothing to do with skin color, never been. It's more reference to bright and dark - it's a list of people you wouldn't do business with. It's very natural for people to use words from of their sensors. We call greenfield)brownfield in a similar manner.

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#44

Post by MikeTheGreat »

brnt wrote: post #32
minxomat wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line is always drawn somewhere, to answer the not very well veiled slippery slope argument. If and when that applies to this specific case, history will show. No one demands everything happen all at once.

I didn't try to make a slippery slope argument. I just want to know if someone considers that title unpleasant, and if so what the alternative could be (not Main of Science obviously).

This could be an awesomely fun sub-thread.

Here's my ideas to get things started:

How about 'Science Wizard'? ' The Science ' 'Expert of Science'

What have the rest of you got? :)

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#45

Post by roenxi »

justRafi wrote: post #13

'master' branch is like a master recording, an original from which copies can be made off. I don't have a Master degree in English, but it feels someone is terribly confused.

That gets to what might be the real issue here. This is a change of something that has no relevance to the master/slave debate. It seems possible that it is being driven by someone who is (a) not that clever and (b) making ego driven decisions. I think that might be what is annoying people.

The whitelist/blacklist thing is a bit of a no-brainer, that one should change. Master/slave is debatable, because it isn't actually discriminatory. But whatever, one for the debate. Master git branches are back in no-brainer territory as something that didn't need to change.

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#46

Post by jakelazaroff »

scottmsul wrote: post #31
jakelazaroff wrote: post #3

This is a tiny change that has no substantial negative effect on anyone’s life. If they’d renamed “pull requests” to “merge requests” no one would care, at all. Let’s please not make a big deal out of it.

I disagree. Renaming "pull requests" to "merge requests" isn't politically motivated, whereas this is a top-down change from political activists. I'm worried that society might go down a path where people can't push back out of fear of one's career or safety.

Political activists aren’t in positions of power at GitHub, so it’s not a top-down change.

I also disagree that it’s especially political. It’s a small name change to be more considerate. The only reason this is “political” — and “merge requests” wouldn’t be — is that for some reason a small group of people are very loudly offended by it.

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#47

Post by non-entity »

I'm having trouble understanding why this was flagged. It covers a major change to tool many (most?) developers use including time and reasoning. It's straight to the point, doesn't seem to seem to have much fluff, and isn't really trained with author's option / ideology. Surely much worse and off topic political articles reach the front page without being mass flagged.

On a random note, I've had vouch for flagged articles / comments before but it seems to very irregular. What decides if the "vouch" option is available to a user?

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#48

Post by [deleted] »

brnt wrote: post #4

I've a Master of Science degree, will that chance too? Is anyone offended by that terminology? [Edit] maybe I should clarify: in my native language master only has the connotation of mastery of a subject. A slave owner can't be called 'master', so we don't have that unpleasant crossover.

[deleted]

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#49

Post by duskwuff »

oarsinsync wrote: post #18
unwoundmouse wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, i highly doubt any developer black or not ever looked and said “wow this master branch naming really makes me feel oppressed.” If this is you, please correct me. However, i do know lots of developers have bash scripts, terminal aliases, python workers that use the “master” terminology that will need to be changed. This seems like an absurd and unnecessary change to me, causing more net damage than benefit.…

A lot of systems I use have renamed master/slave to leader/follower. It set me back a moment the first time I saw it, and took me about 30 seconds to mentally internalise the change. After that first time, no issues as a reader of the code/config.

Leader/follower, primary/replica, sender/receiver, primary/fallback... not only do these phrases avoid the charged language of "master/slave", but they can also often describe the roles of the two components more precisely.

The historical usage of "master/slave" for the two drives on an IDE channel is a great example of the imprecise use of these terms -- it implies a relationship between the devices that doesn't exist at all. Both devices respond directly to commands from the host; the second device on the channel is not under the command of the first one.

Re: New GitHub repos to have default branches named “main” instead of “master”

#50

Post by nprateem »

zerocrates wrote: post #26

Is there any movement on the Git side? I'm assuming this doesn't actually apply if you follow the more "classic" method of creating a Github repo: creating a local git repo and just adding Github as a remote. Edit: I figured that Git itself probably wouldn't change the default branch name (at least not easily), but thought that just making it configurable would be a "neutral" way to make it easier for people to do th…

> Is there any movement on the Git side?

Why should there be?

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