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Easily rename your Git default branch from master to main
- 0xy 6y agoIt's hard to take this as anything more than PC nonsense gone mad. Context is important. Master branches are not perpetuating slavery and this kind of lazy political thinking that words have singular meanings and must be banned is dangerous and scary. Master can also refer to a term used in the BDSM community for totally consensual purposes. Should we be demonizing them too? How regressive.
- wokwokwok 6y agoIt costs basically nothing to do this if you feel strongly about it. It costs you literally nothing if you don’t care / don’t agree and don’t do it yourself. Just live and let live; is being outraged by it not just as bad as what you’re criticising? Should we care what other people call their branches now?!!? How regressive.
- robobro 6y agoWhat about Master Masons (term in freemasonry) ? We don't imply the existence of Slave Masons...
- benjohnson 6y agoThe beginning Mason is an Apprentice, or more specifically an Entered Apprentice
- mstrthrawy76 6y agoThrowaway because when magazine editors are resigning over photos in poor taste from 7 years ago, there's no way I'm posting this under my name, but... Fuck, do people have nothing better to do? PC nonsense, indeed.
- Gunax 6y agoOf course we know that using master/slave terminology doesn't actually perpetuate harm. But the reason to change it is because a lot of people don't like hearing it or saying it. It feels like a punch to the gut when I have to hear master/slave being applied to hard drives. It's perhaps a difficult thing to describe if you have not felt it. I know some of you will think I am being dramatic. I know some of you will flub your lips at it. Yes, I am aware it's just words, and you aren't literally advocating for slavery. But it really does cause me discomfort to have to talk about masters and slaves. Maybe that isn't enough justification for you. But I assure you I am not a theoretical person conjuring ways to make the world more PC just to virtue signal. There really are some people who would rather avoid those terms.
- 0xy 6y agoWhy do you think that your discomfort about a word which you've applied the wrong definition to should result in the censorship for everyone of that purely innocent word? There are people offended about many things in life, but that doesn't mean we should try to accommodate every single person offended over every little thing (especially when you use the wrong definition to perpetuate it). Git is software that provides a level playing field for developers of all creeds, and had zero bad intentions when naming elements of the software. "Master" isn't even a slavery reference at all. To say that it is is to claim that words cannot have multiple meanings, something which is patently false. Master (the definition invoked by Git) has no negative history, and no negative connotations.
- alwillis 6y agorenaming the master branch is just the more inclusive path, that should be pretty clear at this moment in our history—why do you want to insist on pushing back against that just to keep a name that has caused (and continues to cause) so much emotional and psychological harm?? https://twitter.com/vaidehijoshi/status/1271555825069244417?s=21 https://twitter.com/vaidehijoshi/status/1271555825069244417?...
- lizardking 6y agoNo
- mberning 6y agoI can only imagine this will break a great amount of tooling around Git. I also have never had anybody complain about this in real life, in any context (drive jumpers, database nodes, or git branches). I remember within the last few years Redis removed the slave terminology but kept master...
- saagarjha 6y agomaster is the default branch, but as this shows there’s no need to actually name you default branch that. Tooling that treats that specific branch specially is arguably broken to begin with.
- meddlepal 6y agoBut master in git has nothing to do with master-slave... it's nomenclature derives as far as I can tell from the idea of a master copy which is the authoritative version of something.
- alwillis 6y agoit literally doesn’t matter what the original rationale for the naming was. impact outweighs intent. and if it impacts even one person, the intent just doesn’t matter. https://twitter.com/vaidehijoshi/status/1271555823714488320?s=21 https://twitter.com/vaidehijoshi/status/1271555823714488320?...
- meddlepal 6y agoMeh, I find that argument less than compelling and a slippery sloap. But hey who am I to judge what is a good or bad use of people's time and political capital? I'll stick with calling my main branches master and if someone doesn't like it they can fork it and keep their own special version just for themselves. Freedom!
- alwillis 6y agoBut master in git has nothing to do with master-slave... Turns out, that’s probably not true, judging from a thread on this email list: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/msg00066.html https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...
- chomp 6y agoI'm pretty sure "master" in git refers to "gold master", which is the version of software that is released to manufacturing. I've never heard of a slave branch.
- mberning 6y agoI also thought it had some kind of connotations from music production as well.
- perryizgr8 6y agoWe had a master branch that was actually named 'au'. It took me quite a while to realize the connection.
- dgrin91 6y agoI think this is a great example of people taking virtue signaling to points of stupidity. Master-slave being problematic is something I can get behind, but git's master branch isn't even referencing the master-slave analogy. What about people who are really good at something? Should we never call them masters? Just experts? I'm now a chess GrandExpert? I have an Experts degree? You're burning a lot of political capital to change things that really don't matter instead of things that do.
- seiferteric 6y agoEliminate the Masters Degree!
- kevingadd 6y agoMany employers have general policy of not using potentially sensitive terminology in their codebases when there are good alternatives, whether it's "master" (could be master-slave, could be something else), "blacklist", etc. If it's easy to apply that policy you can just do it and then you never have to worry about whether an employee slipped a regrettable word choice into a string literal that a customer's going to see 6 months from now. It's nice to have options for doing this cheaply instead of doing a panic audit of your codebase and changing a bunch of stuff by hand. Determining whether a given use of the word is appropriate requires context and careful consideration, and people already tend to have a bunch of work on their plates! For something like "master" I think it's reasonable to go "let's just not use it in our repos, there are alternatives", it's not erasing any useful nuance or meaning.
- RenaudWasTaken 6y agoThis discussion already happened multiple times on the git Mailing list. e.g: https://public-inbox.org/git/CAOAHyQwyXC1Z3v7BZAC+Bq6JBaM7FvBenA-1fcqeDV==apdWDg@mail.gmail.com/T/#u https://public-inbox.org/git/CAOAHyQwyXC1Z3v7BZAC+Bq6JBaM7Fv... From: Konstantin Ryabitsev Git doesn't use "master-slave" terminology -- the "master" comes from the concept of having a "master" from which copies (branches) are made: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_recording https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_recording The concept predates the music business and goes back to middle ages when a guild master would create a "master work" or "master piece" that the apprentices could use for study or for imitation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_craftsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_craftsman
- DC-3 6y agoI'm astonished anyone ever thought otherwise. Has anyone ever encountered a git branch called 'slave'?
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoHere's roughly 4,000 instances of branch names containing 'slave' for you to peruse: https://github.com/search?q=head%3Aslave https://github.com/search?q=head%3Aslave
- arp242 6y agoThere's a quite a few false positives in that list (e.g. a person named "slavek" always using his name in branch names), a few references to the "master/slave" analogy, and browsing the first few pages I keep seeing the same usernames over and over again (mostly from what seem to be non-native English speakers). So the number seems much lower than 4000, and mostly the result from a very small group of people. I don't know how many branches there are in GitHub, but this seems like a very very small percentage.
- smitty1e 6y agoIt has become increasingly obvious that the Roman alphabet and English language must be replaced due to their overwhelming historical baggage.
- jerzyt 6y agoWhat should I do now with my Masters degree?
- axegon_ 6y agoWat??? Yeah, sure, let's re-write Sonnet 57, the hell with William Shakespeare /s
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zachrose 6y agoCan you imagine being in a class to learn programming or something and your teacher starts talking about how A is a master and B is a slave? Can you imagine that your phenotype matches a minority population that was formerly enslaved? Can you imagine that you're the only such person in your programming class, and feeling everyone's eyes run over you when these terms are first used? Can you imagine that being, if nothing else, a distracting or unwelcoming experience? Sure, technically git doesn't use both ends of this metaphor and it probably comes from something like "gold master" in this case. But if you're throwing up your hands like the underlying intent is absurd, maybe chew on it a bit more?
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoTo not be bothered, even though the 'master' analogy isn't applicable in the context of git branches, is coming from a place of privilege. I hope the folks saying such a change 'goes too far' could walk away after reading all the comments with a delta on this point. To you (generically), it may not matter. But we cannot project our own feelings onto others.
- dbsmith83 6y agoPerhaps there is some privilege in having knowledge to understand where the terminology comes from, but that doesn't mean that it should change because of someone else's ignorance.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoThe suggestion to choose new terminology isn't to appease people who are 'ignorant'. It's to use more welcoming terminology, in spite of the fact, that to you, it may look like they're being ignorant. The problem with saying others are being ignorant is it denies them the recognition of how they feel about the terminology, with or without the historical programming context. It essentially states: "Because they are ignorant, their feeling are invalid". And that's a very un-welcoming attitude to have to new-comers.
- nitemice 6y agoPutting aside the reasoning, I still think this information is useful. Changing the name of a branch can get pretty messy if you do it wrong.
- pacamara619 6y ago> About Scott > [...] He is a failed standup comic [...] That explains a lot.
- mythrwy 6y agoNext up we can get rid of the word "Mister" (or Mr.) which derives from the word master. I believe in that case master actually is (or was) used in the sense of a master/servant relationship.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoImportant detail that I don't see mentioned: Does this affect clones? If a newcomer these a project and tries to clone it, does github knowing about the default branch suffice to make that seamless other than a moment of confusion if they try to look at the branches?
- sorokod 6y ago"...has the benefit of starting with "ma" so that autocomplete <TAB> muscle memory still works" Is this acceptable? Shouldn't the muscle memory be changing as well?
- mongol 6y agoI am thinking of technical uses of slave in a real master/slave context - is it not then really proper to use the term slave? A slave transmitter, only retransmitting what the master sends for example.
- obvthrowaway2 6y agoAre we going to rename "masterclasses" too?
- mstrthrawy76 6y agoYou probably also want to avoid using the word "property" to describe members of objects because slaves were someone's property. Best to say "field." Wait, slaves worked in fields. Attribute.
- KayL 6y agoAre you going to rename hanselMAN? I've done a quick search on your blog and find many "Master" related articles. e.g., https://www.hanselman.com/blog/CompleteHanselminutesMasterFeed.aspx https://www.hanselman.com/blog/CompleteHanselminutesMasterFe... BTW, calling main feed as master feed is unusual. Adding your own name inside is unusual also.
- lxeiqr 6y agoIt's not even related to master/slave concept. How the hell is this oppressive?
- sayusasugi 6y agoIs this some misguided late April fools joke?
- fxtentacle 6y agoI keep mixing up his name with the rails guy
- plerpin 6y agoMaster/slave, OK, let's revisit those terms. But this is a totally different context. Should we rename a master's degree now? How about achieving mastery, is that now a loaded term?
- pensatoio 6y agoI don’t believe anyone genuinely hears a word like this and thinks, “your use of that word offends me due to its etymology.” I think it takes someone with a certain immaturity to go searching for things that offend them and reenforce their political bubble. This is my definition of virtue signaling: Vapid action which serves no purpose other than evoking a pat on the back from your politically-like-minded peers. It’s not specific to a political party, but it disgusts me whenever I see it.
- alwillis 6y agoit literally doesn’t matter what the original rationale for the naming was. impact outweighs intent. and if it impacts even one person, the intent just doesn’t matter. https://twitter.com/vaidehijoshi/status/1271555823714488320?s=21 https://twitter.com/vaidehijoshi/status/1271555823714488320?...
- AlexTrask 6y agoShould we stop using robot word? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot#Origin_of_the_term_'robot' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot#Origin_of_the_term_'robo...
- gotj 6y agoYo, whiteys want "main", gonna git branch -m master white cuz that's the shit for real bro.