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Locking comments. Had a good run, over half a day, but this was always headed for an emotional train wreck.
mainin the streets,masterin the sheetsMommy.
about to start using mommy for all my projects now
MOAB (mother of all branches)
It’s a retroactive bastardization of the word based on one particular culture’s one particular interpretation of it (master being, apparently, a slaveowner) that ignores both the much earlier meanings of master artisan or master craftsman (as opposed to journeyman and apprentice) and masterpiece (through which an artisan is recognised as a master), and the modern meaning of a master copy (like a master record in disc printing).
This isn’t like replacing the “master and slave” terminology with regard to connected devices. That one was warranted because it was often inaccurate and confusing. But forcing the adoption of main instead of master feels like someone got offended on someone else’s behalf because a word looked superficially like that other bad word, and apparently we can’t have an understanding that goes deeper than what letters it’s made up of.
Amerika ist wunderbar. This is an
--initial-branch=masterhousehold.regardless of that, it’s never inconvenienced me and it’s still a net gain in readability, since
mainactually means what it means. have my shell scripts set up to use either one for any repo I’m in automatically.Honestly it’s not even about convenience. As far as breaking conventions go, this one has none-to-minimal impact – existing
masterbranches won’t suddenly become invalid. But it’s yet another instance of a subset of a subset of a subset of users getting to enforce their sensibilities for superficial reasons, and ultimately with zero effect regarding the cause they claim to represent; cultural and linguistic differences be damned.I’d love to be more specific, but I don’t want the comments to turn into a warzone.
And don’t pretend like master doesn’t mean what it means.
Claiming that
masteron github stems from master recordings is not only disingenuous but also incorrect.As a FOSS alternative to BitKeeper, Git naturally reimplemented it’s naming conventions as well - and because of the power of version control - we can actually check what the original meaning was derived from:
And yes I agree that GitHub just changing the name of the default branch while keeping their ICE contracts is performative as fuck - which imo means we should both boycott GitHub and use naming conventions that don’t have a history related to one of the worst atrocities the global north has brought upon the world…
I concede the point about the word’s origin… not that I’ve seen anyone ever refer to a branch as a “slave”, nor do I think that it’s appropriate given that the branches are not subservient to the trunk/master/main/etc until one is merged into or rebased onto the other…
I also wrote a whole-ass speech about the modern world’s relation to the Atlantic slave trade and the guilt certain people are trying to inflict on everyone, but I know what the replies will be (we’re just redditors by another name after all) and it’s ultimately not a soapbox worth dying on. Anyway, my thesis is study history, learn its injustices, and learn how to do better effectively.
People: hey you should think about this a bit and consider changing it to have a small positive impact
You: 🤬
Nobody’s forcing you to, nobody’s yelling at you, if you don’t do it it’s not a massive deal, you’re just yelling at clouds. Actually that’s not entirely true; I’m yelling at you because of your absurd overreaction to the mere idea of being a little thoughtful.
I don’t know if you got it from media, or you heard about this movement and for some reason immediately jumped to “they’re forcing us!”, but you really need to do some self reflection on why you got it so wrong and why you were so quick to do this outburst.
Master. I find this out of context fight against words pathetic.
Why master? main is much clearer
Why not change “walkie talkie” to “radio phone”? It is so much cleaner.
Because change for the sake of change always brings more work than what it saves.
Why change something that works and everyone recognizes it? Of course, if this debate was there when the standard was created…
Because it is a historically settled down terminology that everyone understands and there is no adequate reason to change it.
everyone understands
no, new people learn git every day.
‘main’ is much clearer. It’s maybe not the same readability gain as ‘blocklist/allowlist’ over ‘blacklist/whitelist’, but it’s still there.
I agree that it’s pathetic. I’ve never been a fan of virtue signaling.
In the other hand, “main” is easier to type than “master” (or “trunk,” for that matter). So I’ve made peace with it.
Trunk would be better because of all the branches.
Using master is stupid. Is your branch in charge of others? Is it more skilled than your other branches? Software engineering has too many crusty dorks that stick to their paradigms like it’s their religion. Acting like it’s their heritage to use outdated terms but also it doesn’t matter so that’s why they’ll keep using it.
I always rename my branch to main. Because it’s shorter? That’s the extent of my reasoning. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
I personally don’t think the word “master” should be considered offensive - my wife has a master’s degree in deaf education - but I’ve switched to “main” because that seems to be the convention now and it really doesn’t have to be an issue.
There’s no “slave” convention in git so I’m not sure how it can be considered an issue (I get that drives being master and slave is a bit icky). But then, what is it a master of?
As others have said, “trunk” would have been a more sensible replacement.
It’s a master the same way that an original recording (the final version before mass reproduction) is called a master; mixing and processing the raw media clips into such a recording is called mastering. It’s a convention that has existed long before computers were a thing.
(the image is a hyperlink)
Honest question. I cannot see if you are being serious here. If this is a real thing, is it because of US slavery history? No way you are saying your wife has a main degree in deaf education?
No, I said I don’t think the word “master” is inherently offensive - after all, my wife has a master’s degree. But to answer OP’s question, I’ve switched to “main” as my git branch because that seems to be the new convention.
I find “master” offensive, so I make sure I main bate instead.
Just use
main. I’m not bothered by either, but I’m not in the demographic that would be bothered bymaster, so I usemainand STFU. It takes way less effort to switch tomain(if you haven’t already) than to come up with all this rhetoric about whymastershouldn’t trigger people.No gods no master branches
Master make no sense. It fail to comunicate what role the default branch serve. Main is clearer, your default branch is the main one.
I use master in all my projects
I save my code as .txt files on my hard drive.
They follow the naming convention “project1”, “project1a”, “project1a1” and so on in consecutive logical order
If it uses
masterand it’s too much trouble to get people to switch. It staysmasteruntil we can coordinate.If I’m starting a new project I use
main.Why?
It doesn’t take much to do and it avoids any misunderstandings or arguments and we’ve got work to do. I don’t particular care if you guys are “stuck” on
master. If that’s what it is and everyone wants to keep it that way, I don’t have enough will to change it. If it’s under my control, I will change it.You know what else avoids arguments? Not hiring people who start arguments over token bullshit.
I see mostly people defending master starting arguments. I’ve never seen anyone pushing for main get even half as mad as some of the people coming up with a reason why it’s stupid. Like, holy shit guys, just don’t change it and move on, why be so mad about it?
No one commits to
trunkanymore…Master. I find the whole “reasoning” behind the controversy absolute horseshit peddled by nontechnical people on the sidelines
Just that master doesn’t actually makes much sense in most git workflows.
If you understand master like you would understand the master/slave relationship in old tech, then of course, master seems to make sense until you realize that there is no slave in that sense or in name. Additional, master is rarely doing anything but having release or hot fixes being merged into it. Arguably dev is the master of the branches.
In other words, master was always a bad name. It is silly to rename it because “racism” but it is at least equally silly to act like master is a much better name than “main” or “live” or “prod” or … Fuck, the list is long.
