So creating a new repo on GitHub, you get a set of getting started steps. They changed the default branchname to “main” from “master” due to its connotations with slavery.

When I create a new repo now, the initial getting started steps recommend creating a branch named “master” as opposed to “main” as it was a while ago.

It’s especially weird since the line git branch -M master is completely unnecessary, since git init still sets you up with a “master” branch.

Disclaimer: I have a bunch of private repos, and my default branchnames are pretty much all “master”.

Is this a recent change?

Edit: Mystery solved, my default branchname is “master”. Thanks [email protected] !

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish
    57·
    4 hours ago

    I honestly never saw a problem with master / slave, nor with whitelist / blacklist. It’s the same as killing children, forking children, etc, it’s computer terminology and not everything means that bad thing that you personally want it to mean.

    I’m not politically correct, I live in a real world. Calling a git repository different really isn’t doing shit against slavery and it pisses me off that people are going to down vote me on their slavery built iPhone because apparently I like naughty words and you apparently like slavery.

    You want to stop racism? Then stop meddling with computer terminology and go out there and actually do something real.

  • InstallGentoo@lemmy.zipEnglish
    6126·
    2 days ago

    God I wish. The change to “main” was pointless and unnecessary. It’s almost like people want to find problems when there aren’t any.

    • gerryflap@feddit.nlEnglish
      2·
      56 minutes ago

      Honestly I feel like people who had an issue with this were just as much making an issue out of nothing. I personally also think that “master” is just as much a normal and valid name as “main”, and to me the rename kinda felt like performative bullshit. But at the same time it’s just a name, if it makes people happy I don’t really care either. Nowadays I tend to use main, but it’s not something I really pay attention to.

    • beeb@lemm.eeEnglish
      10·
      11 hours ago

      I prefer main simply because it faster to type. I propose main branches be renamed to “m”

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.worldEnglish
      265·
      2 days ago

      I like it, because it forced people not to assume master is the main branch. If something is common enough to almost be a standard, but it’s not actually a standard, it’s just waiting for disaster.

      These assumptions cause unnecessary breakage, but people will make them unless forced not to.

        • FooBarrington@lemmy.worldEnglish
          42·
          1 day ago

          And yet not everyone used to use master, so scripts kept breaking for no good reason.

          Either make it a standard, or stop assuming it’s a standard. De-facto isn’t good enough.

          • ryathal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            61·
            1 day ago

            Having a magical standard fairy waive a wand isn’t going to fix scripts, or stop them from breaking.

            • FooBarrington@lemmy.worldEnglish
              11·
              1 day ago

              What? If there’s an actual standard, it will stop scripts from breaking, because the assumption that master is the main branch will always be true.

              • clif@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                9 hours ago

                I’ll find something else to screw up and cause it to break, don’t worry.

      • normalexit@lemmy.worldEnglish
        142·
        1 day ago

        It’s just a word at the end of the day. To me “main” is literally a shorter word that means the same thing in my brain. It could be “trunk” or “release” or whatever else you’d like. “master” makes some people uneasy, so it seems like a simple solution to pick a different word.

        The development community talked, informally settled on main, and here we are. Anecdotally it took me more time to write this than to switch most of my projects over. I use GitHub actions and a simple find/replace for a word not otherwise commonly used was the ticket.

        I really don’t care what other people use at the end of the day. Discussing version control and branching strategies drains my life away. If it is difficult to switch, don’t, but if you start a new repo it is worth thinking about for a moment.

          • normalexit@lemmy.worldEnglish
            102·
            1 day ago

            You seem like a delightful person to work with. I’m just saying be pragmatic and maybe try not to be a dick about it?

            • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              52·
              1 day ago

              It’s always eye raising when someone takes umbrage with using main over master.

              Like … awfully weird hill to die on, you’re kind telling on yourself some.

                • boatswain@infosec.pubEnglish
                  2·
                  5 hours ago

                  That you’d be a bad teammate: the kind of person who puts personal preference above what the group has decided and causes problems for no good reason; the kind of person who would insist on indenting with spaces when the whole team has decided to use tabs.

      • astrsk@fedia.io
        1628·
        2 days ago

        The only statement in your ridiculous rant that has any validity is that of your legacy pipeline configurations. But pipelines need to be updated and validated semi-regularly and should be generalized to begin with, so it’s not really any good point that your legacy pipelines cannot handle a default branch name change like modern pipelines should.

        Swap main and master in your comment and it reads the exact same with all the same shallow justifications.

          • astrsk@fedia.io
            514·
            2 days ago

            lmao nothing you’ve said has anything to do with “Main is more concise and less problematic”. Just because you created more work for yourself by having 70+ pipelines that need to be rewritten for a branch name change doesn’t mean it’s less concise or more problematic. It means you messed up by not having a pipeline capable of such a basic feature – generalized targets with a separation of concerns. Standards change, requirements change, so do build pipelines. Being stubborn is not a reason against changing colloquial terms out of respect and growth in understanding.

              • astrsk@fedia.io
                21·
                1 day ago

                Again, you’re conflating your own stubbornness with correctness and that just ain’t how it goes. Branch names are frivolous. So much so that changing the strategy or retargeting a branch one time shouldn’t be such a nightmare for your pipelines that you have to pretend like you’re the big dick on campus spouting accomplishments when someone mildly suggests there’s a mistake in your thinking. Look inward if you’re so upset by this that you have to make up irrelevant insults in a vague attempt to protect your own ego, then go fix your pipelines to make it easier to do for the next person after you’re gone.

                • kreynen@kbin.melroy.org
                  2·
                  9 hours ago

                  @[email protected]

                  @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

                  The posts you are replying to ha e been deleted. I’m really currious what they said because we have one vendor who claims to be/is locked into usung “master”. This either requires us to write CI that merges main -> master and mirrors master back to main or use master. This can confuse junior devs once or twice, but it is really not an issue. The ONLY time I felt compelled to use master because of this vendor was when working with a group using GitLab. GitLab has a feature called Pull Mirroring that is MUCH more reliable than a pull/mirror action in GitHub that does the same thing, but to use that the branch names had to be the same.

                  I see both sides of this argument. The master/slave relationship in tech is NOT like masterworks or mastering a craft. It is based on one “owning” the other, but I don’t think that allowing technology to work that way is violating its rights. Obviously changing the name doesn’t change the behavior and isn’t it really only when that behavior is applied to people that we have a problem with it?

                  I never fully supported the effort required to change, but I’ve also never written anything in a way it would be difficult to change. I recognize that it could be considered a micro aggression, but it’s not like we are going to stop ants or bees from treating other classes as forced labor. Slavery exists. It is bad when applied to people. It accurately describes tech. Changing the name of the master db or branch did NOT free the slaves.