Default branch naming in GitHub repositories

Default branch naming in GitHub repositories

[Derick Montague]

Hello,

In recent weeks, we have seen an initiative to update any
racially-charged naming conventions within our industry. Some examples
include Blacklist, Whitelist, and Master / Slave. 

There is also an initiative to change the default branch naming in
Github. Github is in the process of making changes for new repositories,
and I would like to suggest that we start discussions about our default
branch naming. One suggestion that has some traction is replacing master
with main. 

I'd like to discuss an overall strategy and the impact it would have on
our build scripts before I ask to make this change in the webui-vue repository.

- https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53050955
- https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-to-replace-master-with-alternative-term-to-avoid-slavery-references/


Thank you!
 
Derick Montague
FED Lead | OpenBMC Design Team Lead
Cognitive Systems User Experience

Re: Default branch naming in GitHub repositories

[Patrick Williams]

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On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 07:36:04PM +0000, Derick Montague wrote:
> There is also an initiative to change the default branch naming in
> Github. Github is in the process of making changes for new repositories,
> and I would like to suggest that we start discussions about our default
> branch naming. One suggestion that has some traction is replacing master
> with main. 

The default name within Github doesn't really matter.  This is only the
place that it draws the default landing page and statistics from and is
already trivial to change.

> I'd like to discuss an overall strategy and the impact it would have on
> our build scripts before I ask to make this change in the webui-vue repository.

My personal opinion is we should follow whatever upstream git does.  The
default branch name has fairly broad reaching impacts to git usability
and Yocto recipes.  If git decides to change the default branch name,
that project is going to plow through many of the implications of that
decision before it gets to us and Yocto will likely similarly start the
transition ahead of us.  If we decide to proactively change the name to
something else, we have to deal with all of that impact ourselves.

-- 
Patrick Williams

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