Re: [RFC/PATCH] tests: support testing with an arbitrary default branch (sort of)

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 7:32 AM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
<avarab@gmail.com> wrote:

> I do 100% agree that the s/master/main/g change of the default should be
> made in one form or another. In my mind that doesn't even require a
> consideration of the political motivations at this point as far as
> git.git is concerned, just:

Others disagree.

While the political motivation shouldn't be a central concern, I
suspect the vast majority of users have no idea this change is coming,
and when they see the warning they will likely complain... Strongly.
The fact that this change is extremely politically charged will become
a factor.

>  1. Major Git hosting providers already made the change

That's their decision. The Git project shouldn't be held hostage to
third party decisions.

>  2. Realistically a lot/majority of git's user base interact with that
>     in a major way.
>
>  3. A discrepancy in any default between /usr/bin/git and those
>     providers is more confusing than not.

That's a problem for GitHub et al. Fortunately they can tell their
users to set init.defaultbranch to whatever they want.

>  4. #3 doesn't mean they say "jump" we say "how high" whatever the
>     change is.
>
>     But in this case the default is an entirely arbitrary default. Not
>     e.g. that they decided to add some ill-thought out header to the
>     object format or whatever.

I don't agree it is arbitrary, otherwise you could set the default to
"loremipsum". Moreover, even if was arbitrary, it was arbitrary in
2005, not 2020 where "master" is already widely used in basically
*all* the documentation everywhere. Some people have been using this
name for 15 years, they won't give it up just like that.

People will complain, especially if they don't see a good reason for the change.

-- 
Felipe Contreras