7 ms·

I wonder about which primary branch naming convention they’ll arrive at. “primary” is my personal favorite ;)

Twisol 6y ago
I saw somebody on Twitter call theirs "canon", which I've really taken a liking to. It fits nicely in regular speech too :D
- jamesponddotco 6y ago
  I use, and prefer "trunk" since I rarely use branches, but "canon" might change my mind.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    I've been debating "mast" as it sort of evokes "trunk" in an amusing seafaring sort of way, and partly for the same reason a lot people like "main" because their muscle memory is "ma<TAB>". For several reasons my muscle memory at this point is "mast<TAB>", so "mast" is even a slight improvement over my muscle memory. But I'm not sure I'd get that much interest from other people to use "mast", it might just be something in my own projects.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      I've also been debating just calling it "default" since we always refer to it as the default branch anyway.
      - WorldMaker 6y ago
        Useful to know: the linked GitLab documentation points out several flaws with "default" as the name for a branch, in particular the cognitive association with financial default (a negative circumstance), which would make internationalization hard and while not as terrible an association and history as "master" still a bad association that now I've thought about it I cannot stop thinking about.
- solatic 6y ago
  Canon is excellent, but I fear it wouldn't catch on due to its religious origins / connotations.
  - palsir 6y ago
    what are the religious origins/connotations? That various religions also have a canon and apocrypha?
  - Twisol 6y ago
    I can appreciate that "canon" is used in religious contexts, but its meaning and origin go back further than that. Wiktionary (hardly the best source, I know) lists three secular meanings before the religious ones begin. The most relevant is this one: > A group of literary works that are generally accepted as representing a field. Also, the coinage "fanon" (as in derivative works by a fanbase) comes directly from the treatment of the source material as "canonical". (Frankly, "canonical" is the best argument I can make for "canon".)
    - romanoderoma 6y ago
      > but its meaning and origin go back further than that master/slave goes back to Mesopotamia, 4 thousands years ago and was used to describe the relationship between men and gods > Man was believed to have been created to serve the gods, or perhaps wait on them: the god is lord or master (belu) and man is servant or slave (ardu) I guess being that old is not good enough nowadays
      - franga2000 6y ago
        But git doesn't use master/slave (noun). It uses master as an adjective ("master branch"). Think cassettes and vinyl records or "master boot record". It means being the definitive source of truth and has been used in that form for centuries [citation needed, but I don't remember where I read it]. This isn't just an instance of "not old enough", it's an instance of it not even being the same word, so I guess you just can't win this...
- jrockway 6y ago
  Is the most recent commit on this main branch called "HEADCANON"?
- stephenhandley 6y ago
  I think quaid would be good, you know because of Randy Quaid and also because of Total Recall
apetresc 6y ago
Github has said the most popular one across all their repos is `main`, and that's what they'll be going with themselves. (Source: https://github.com/github/renaming https://github.com/github/renaming)
- eclipseo76 6y ago
  I personally hope this won't catch on because some third party library still expect master to be the default branch. When main is used, I have to monkeypatch some script I use to work aroud it. edit: I fixed the script to use branch [0] instead of branch master (using GitPython).
  - joshmanders 6y ago
    Maybe you can fork them and submit a patch with the changes fixing it. :)
oweiler 6y ago
I've seen `main` being used quite often.
TheChaplain 6y ago
I renamed all mine to 'senpai'.
- augusto-moura 6y ago
  alias notice_me='git pull'
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Wouldn't that be a better alias for `gh pr create`?
- Seirdy 6y ago
  "Senpai" means senior/superior (e.g., "Senpai Dev"). A better honorific would be "dono".
x87678r 6y ago
I miss trunk.
petepete 6y ago
As someone who learnt version control with Subversion, I'm hoping trunk will come back into fashion.
dpipemazo 6y ago
At Elementary we've adopted `latest` as it tracks nicely with the bleeding-edge tag for Docker containers which we don't have control over. This way, when we build/deploy containers off of the `latest` branch there's an equivalent tag on our DockerHub repos. https://github.com/elementary-robotics/atom https://github.com/elementary-robotics/atom
- GordonS 6y ago
  Hmm, not sure about "latest", as almost always, the master/primary/whatever branch is not actually the latest code, but the latest "production ready" code.
arp242 6y ago
It's rather hard to type as it's switching hands a lot; both "master" and "main" are easier to type, and are also shorter (as least "main" would be an improvement in that sense; "primary" would be quite the regression IMO).
- Normal_gaussian 6y ago
  That is why the single handed "fred" branch shall be the beacon of all truth. Until it is accused of being sexist, or too western.
  - marvy 6y ago
    How about just "fed"?
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Easily solved, keep it to the QWERTY home row and make it the "asdf" branch. Could even backronym it to something like All Saved Data Files, maybe.
    - frompdx 6y ago
      As a lisp fan, I second this proposal. https://common-lisp.net/project/asdf/ https://common-lisp.net/project/asdf/
globular-toast 6y ago
Probably the ubiquitous "master".
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  It's the ubiquitous "master" that everyone is trying to get rid of. There are details in several of the linked articles. TL/DR: The master/slave analogy is problematic and lots of projects have decided we don't need that terminology around any more, when we can pick less problematic names easily (easier now that there is a config option for it without needing to create a full git init template).
  - bengale 6y ago
    That’s not the type of master that’s it’s referring to. But I’m not sure etymology really matters I guess.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      There's a lot of back and forth on the discussion, and summaries are included in the tops of almost all of the linked articles. In general, the name "master" branch was commonly used in proprietary git predecessor BitKeeper which almost all of the early git developers were familiar with [1] and it did use master in a master/slave meaning. (It had a concept of "slave repositories".) While git has never had a concept of "slave branches" and the meaning may very well have meant to evoke one of the other etymologies, the word was "in the air" because of BitKeeper, which did intend it in a master/slave relationship, so git is guilty by association if not guilty by intent. Which is fine, no one is suggesting git is guilty by intent, they are simply suggesting it is time now to do what early git developers failed to do and question the association (both associations, using the word simply because it was a word commonly thrown around in tech up to that point, and in the association of master with chattel slavery). [1] Bitkeeper was the SCS that the Linux kernel had been using up to that point, and whose dropping of free licenses to open source projects like the Linux kernel was the immediate cause of the creation of both git and Mercurial.
  - 6y ago
IshKebab 6y ago
I think most important thing is not which branch name we chose, it's that we all chose completely different ones. I'm going for "principal".
daigoba66 6y ago
I’ve migrated several repositories from mercurial, and didn’t bother to rename “default”. It works perfectly fine and no one is ever confused.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

I saw somebody on Twitter call theirs "canon", which I've really taken a liking to. It fits nicely in regular speech too :D

jamesponddotco 6y ago
I use, and prefer "trunk" since I rarely use branches, but "canon" might change my mind.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  I've been debating "mast" as it sort of evokes "trunk" in an amusing seafaring sort of way, and partly for the same reason a lot people like "main" because their muscle memory is "ma<TAB>". For several reasons my muscle memory at this point is "mast<TAB>", so "mast" is even a slight improvement over my muscle memory. But I'm not sure I'd get that much interest from other people to use "mast", it might just be something in my own projects.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    I've also been debating just calling it "default" since we always refer to it as the default branch anyway.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      Useful to know: the linked GitLab documentation points out several flaws with "default" as the name for a branch, in particular the cognitive association with financial default (a negative circumstance), which would make internationalization hard and while not as terrible an association and history as "master" still a bad association that now I've thought about it I cannot stop thinking about.
solatic 6y ago
Canon is excellent, but I fear it wouldn't catch on due to its religious origins / connotations.
- palsir 6y ago
  what are the religious origins/connotations? That various religions also have a canon and apocrypha?
- Twisol 6y ago
  I can appreciate that "canon" is used in religious contexts, but its meaning and origin go back further than that. Wiktionary (hardly the best source, I know) lists three secular meanings before the religious ones begin. The most relevant is this one: > A group of literary works that are generally accepted as representing a field. Also, the coinage "fanon" (as in derivative works by a fanbase) comes directly from the treatment of the source material as "canonical". (Frankly, "canonical" is the best argument I can make for "canon".)
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    > but its meaning and origin go back further than that master/slave goes back to Mesopotamia, 4 thousands years ago and was used to describe the relationship between men and gods > Man was believed to have been created to serve the gods, or perhaps wait on them: the god is lord or master (belu) and man is servant or slave (ardu) I guess being that old is not good enough nowadays
    - franga2000 6y ago
      But git doesn't use master/slave (noun). It uses master as an adjective ("master branch"). Think cassettes and vinyl records or "master boot record". It means being the definitive source of truth and has been used in that form for centuries [citation needed, but I don't remember where I read it]. This isn't just an instance of "not old enough", it's an instance of it not even being the same word, so I guess you just can't win this...
jrockway 6y ago
Is the most recent commit on this main branch called "HEADCANON"?
stephenhandley 6y ago
I think quaid would be good, you know because of Randy Quaid and also because of Total Recall

apetresc 6y ago

Github has said the most popular one across all their repos is `main`, and that's what they'll be going with themselves. (Source: https://github.com/github/renaming https://github.com/github/renaming)

eclipseo76 6y ago
I personally hope this won't catch on because some third party library still expect master to be the default branch. When main is used, I have to monkeypatch some script I use to work aroud it. edit: I fixed the script to use branch [0] instead of branch master (using GitPython).
- joshmanders 6y ago
  Maybe you can fork them and submit a patch with the changes fixing it. :)

oweiler 6y ago

I've seen `main` being used quite often.

TheChaplain 6y ago

I renamed all mine to 'senpai'.

augusto-moura 6y ago
alias notice_me='git pull'
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Wouldn't that be a better alias for `gh pr create`?
Seirdy 6y ago
"Senpai" means senior/superior (e.g., "Senpai Dev"). A better honorific would be "dono".

x87678r 6y ago

I miss trunk.

petepete 6y ago

As someone who learnt version control with Subversion, I'm hoping trunk will come back into fashion.

dpipemazo 6y ago

At Elementary we've adopted `latest` as it tracks nicely with the bleeding-edge tag for Docker containers which we don't have control over. This way, when we build/deploy containers off of the `latest` branch there's an equivalent tag on our DockerHub repos. https://github.com/elementary-robotics/atom https://github.com/elementary-robotics/atom

GordonS 6y ago
Hmm, not sure about "latest", as almost always, the master/primary/whatever branch is not actually the latest code, but the latest "production ready" code.

arp242 6y ago

It's rather hard to type as it's switching hands a lot; both "master" and "main" are easier to type, and are also shorter (as least "main" would be an improvement in that sense; "primary" would be quite the regression IMO).

Normal_gaussian 6y ago
That is why the single handed "fred" branch shall be the beacon of all truth. Until it is accused of being sexist, or too western.
- marvy 6y ago
  How about just "fed"?
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Easily solved, keep it to the QWERTY home row and make it the "asdf" branch. Could even backronym it to something like All Saved Data Files, maybe.
  - frompdx 6y ago
    As a lisp fan, I second this proposal. https://common-lisp.net/project/asdf/ https://common-lisp.net/project/asdf/

globular-toast 6y ago

Probably the ubiquitous "master".

WorldMaker 6y ago
It's the ubiquitous "master" that everyone is trying to get rid of. There are details in several of the linked articles. TL/DR: The master/slave analogy is problematic and lots of projects have decided we don't need that terminology around any more, when we can pick less problematic names easily (easier now that there is a config option for it without needing to create a full git init template).
- bengale 6y ago
  That’s not the type of master that’s it’s referring to. But I’m not sure etymology really matters I guess.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    There's a lot of back and forth on the discussion, and summaries are included in the tops of almost all of the linked articles. In general, the name "master" branch was commonly used in proprietary git predecessor BitKeeper which almost all of the early git developers were familiar with [1] and it did use master in a master/slave meaning. (It had a concept of "slave repositories".) While git has never had a concept of "slave branches" and the meaning may very well have meant to evoke one of the other etymologies, the word was "in the air" because of BitKeeper, which did intend it in a master/slave relationship, so git is guilty by association if not guilty by intent. Which is fine, no one is suggesting git is guilty by intent, they are simply suggesting it is time now to do what early git developers failed to do and question the association (both associations, using the word simply because it was a word commonly thrown around in tech up to that point, and in the association of master with chattel slavery). [1] Bitkeeper was the SCS that the Linux kernel had been using up to that point, and whose dropping of free licenses to open source projects like the Linux kernel was the immediate cause of the creation of both git and Mercurial.
- 6y ago

IshKebab 6y ago

I think most important thing is not which branch name we chose, it's that we all chose completely different ones. I'm going for "principal".

daigoba66 6y ago

I’ve migrated several repositories from mercurial, and didn’t bother to rename “default”. It works perfectly fine and no one is ever confused.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]