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I'm a little confused about why GitHub is doing this. The master/slave thing I get - there's a direct link to actual slavery there, and it can be replaced with
by quicklime 6y ago
I'm a little confused about why GitHub is doing this. The master/slave thing I get - there's a direct link to actual slavery there, and it can be replaced with terms like leader/follower or primary/replica fairly easily.
But the "master" branch in Git doesn't have a slave branch. It's a master from which copies are made (as in a "master recording"), which is a different sense of the word.
- plorkyeran 6y agoBitkeeper had master/slave repositories, and that's where git's use of the word master came from.
- maushu 6y agoI'm going to need a source for that. I can't find any reference to slave in Bitkeeper documentation.
- brenschluss 6y agoThis tweet seems to have researched otherwise - that master/slave originated from bit keeper: https://twitter.com/tobie/status/1270290278029631489?s=21 https://twitter.com/tobie/status/1270290278029631489?s=21
- mnm1 6y agoIt's just somebody's opinion. "Probably" is the word that indicates that.
- GordonS 6y agoI mean, even if it did originally, I doubt anyone that has worked with git in the past decade thought of a master/slave connection; it just doesn't make sense. I talked about this today with a black coworker (obviously doesn't represent the feelings of all black people etc), and he actually got quite angry about it - but he was angry at the idea of changing master to main, not the idea of keeping it! From his perspective, it's nothing more than virue signalling, a distraction from real issues. He also thought it risked ridicule, and that things like this risk turning people against real change. He did kind of see the point about the separate blacklist/whitelist debate though. Personally, instead of "master" I like the word "trunk", as I think it goes well with the branching concept.