8 ms·
The default branch for newly-created repositories is now main
- ominous 6y agoThe branch is now called "main" because the previous name "master" was found to be problematic due to historical racism / colonialism. And so it remains historical racism / colonialism the cause for the name of the default branch for newly-created repositories on Github.
- DreamScatter 6y agoThat's a really great observation! Ironic..
- mcphage 6y agoIf you step around a nail sticking out of the ground, then the nail is the cause of you taking the path you take, yes. But the point is: you're no longer stepping on the nail.
- intortus 6y agoIt's not about erasing history. It's about the ongoing impact of blatantly referencing the notion of enslaving people.
- smegcicle 6y agoThe parent is pointing out is that what was once an oblique reference to human slavery is now being changed in explicit reference to human slavery
- mcphage 6y ago> is now being changed in explicit reference to human slavery So? It's being changed to something that's no longer an oblique reference to human slavery. The fact that it's being done to because of that reference to human slavery is the entire point, not a mark against it.
- ithkuil 6y agoIs it really ao blatant though? Is the word master ever been used to refer to a slave owner?
- ithkuil 6y agoEDIT: ever been used to refer to anything other than a slave owner?
- ominous 6y agoYes. As a first example, I give you the default name for a git repository up to October 2020, on github. It wasn't used to mean "a slave owner". And a second random example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio)
- seibelj 6y agoSerious question - if the word "master" is now bad, even in cases where the term "slave" is absent, shouldn't we be renaming the "Master's" degree? I don't fully understand all the nuance here.
- monkeybutton 6y agoThe same meaning as saying someone is a master of their craft?
- edoceo 6y agoArent master of craft and master bits same/similar? And what about the name Owner for things? I'm in favour of these moves but they feel like empty gestures to me.
- ithkuil 6y agoThat's what happens when latin disappears from the default baggage of an educated person and you can no longer recognize etymologies: master comes from magister (teacher). The owner of slaves was the dominus (which begat words like domain etc)
- acephal 6y agoAs well as Don and Doña
- rq1 6y agoPerfect! Everyone should feel great and happy now, racism problem is solved.
- j4nt4b 6y agoReminds me of this gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEI7oX0XxJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEI7oX0XxJw
- stepsrabbit 6y agoI agree with the sentiment but I would add that slavery isn’t even necessarily racist. Maybe it was in the USA but not in the rest of the world. Even today there are people who are slaves to others that look like them (“race” is silly when talking about humans).
- jki275 6y agoThe Irish slaves in NYC might argue that slavery went way beyond racism.
- colinmhayes 6y agoIs this strawman helpful? No one is claiming this will single handedly solve racism. There's effectively no downside, so any upside means it's an easy decision.
- stronglikedan 6y agoIt's helpful in pointing out how silly all this obvious yet useless virtue-signalling has become, as if my teams weren't busy enough already.
- ThrowawayR2 6y agoAs an Asian, I'm offended that yellow is used to indicate warnings. Please change all instances of that to some other color. "There is effectively no downside, so any upside means it's an easy decision."
- Normille 6y agoMemo to self: Rename default branch to 'Master', when creating new repos.
- SheepSlapper 6y agoGithub -> Settings -> Repositories -> Repository Default Branch This will let you override this change, so you can set whatever default name you want for the first branch of new repos
- Normille 6y agoThanks. Done that. Github can virtue signal on their own code if they want. But they're not doing it on mine.
- bengale 6y agoYou can set it back to normal in your settings.
- mwambua 6y agoAre we just changing the nomenclature because we want to pretend that master-slave relationships did/do not exist? What is this fixing? (Genuine question from a person who grew up in a former colony)
- edoceo 6y agoFixing the use of a word, in a unique context, that has the possibility of offending some people. I don't think anyone is trying to hide the horrible parts of history.
- mwambua 6y agoI guess I don't understand why it would be offensive then. Can anyone link a good explanation of why it is?
- edoceo 6y agoHere's some stuff I found with "why is master offense" https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nationalreview.com/2017/04/rice-university-master-slavery-connotation/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nationalreview.com/2017/04/... https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/issues/569 https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/... Both have some interesting discussion points. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_(technology)
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoNo, because we don’t want on evoke those connotations in situations where they are unnecessary
- gnusty_gnurc 6y agoThis is meant to cater to rich liberal sensibilities. Similar to protesting Joe Rogan, when they expropriate from artists day-in-day-out. They only pitch a fit when someone dares to say something that crosses their elitist feelings.
- lhoff 6y agoMy prediction about that is: Two years from now - no one will care about that
- oblio 6y agoYeah. I really, really like the example of Sweden changing the side they drive on. They used to drive on the left, like Britain. However, Sweden, as the astute observer will notice, is not an island. Neighbors and close-by countries Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Russia all drive on the right. So Sweden had 2 (I think) referendums to change the side. Because people are creatures of habit, the referendums failed. About a decade later a government somehow snuck the change in a law, I don't remember how. There was much gnashing of teeth, but they switched. For a while I think light accident rates were higher as people got used to the system. I think major accident rates even went down, as people were a bit more cautious than usual. After that, it all went back to normal and I imagine a young Swede in 2020 doesn't even know much about it anymore.
- oblio 6y agoI will probably get down voted about this, but I don't care. There are almost no downsides to what they're doing and the people complaining are complaining for silly reasons. The new term is neutral, it's shorter, the downside of renaming a branch is negligible for git. A tempest in a teapot.
- DonaldPShimoda 6y agoPeople are making sarcastic remarks like "Oh, racism is solved now!" Obviously racism isn't solved by this, but it's a net-positive change that doesn't take much work to adapt to and is mostly unobtrusive. I don't see why that's something to get upset about, unless you endorse the maintenance of systems that can be seen as oppressive (now matter how small the oppression!). There's no good reason not to be on-board with this change.
- verroq 6y agoThe downside is that it shows the crazies in are charge and there is no one with a brain cell left to stand up to them. Just like when that lecturer was suspended for saying ne-ga. Oh a word sounds close, better punish him for racism. Oh “master”, a word that has another meaning in a totally different context, better remove it. Anyone that allows bullshit like this to happen is enabling these extremists to have their way.
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoOh no, a name changed! all our code is worthless now!
- verroq 6y agoNames have meaning. Names are important. Let’s overlook the little things so we can overlook the big things too right? Wait until they come for you when you have a minor transgression and get branded as a counter-revolutionary. This is the start of the American Cultural Revolution.
- 6y ago
- postalrat 6y ago"The default branch name for new repositories is now main"... why not call it default?
- otachack 6y agoOne beauty of git is you can call your default branches whatever you want. You just may need an extra step or two in setup based on the repo host service.
- sebazzz 6y agoUsually it is done by setting origin/HEAD.
- twic 6y agoThat would involve admitting that Mercurial got it right fifteen years ago.
- danfritz 6y agoUnpopular opinion: Sticking with master as this is being political correctness taking way to far. Are we also going to rename master-bedrooms? [1] At least keep the default master and let people customise it however they want. [1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/master https://www.etymonline.com/word/master
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoHow does it affect you?
- danfritz 6y ago- Years of muscle memory - git itself uses master - a lot of tooling / commands expect master do they now need to be aware of main vs master - I understand the need for some to allow to change the default but just changing it for everyone by default is a step to far
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoThat tooling is wrong: you could always change the default branch on git.
- thrixton 6y agoIt may be wrong but it's working so when it stops working that is a quantifiable harm. Compare that to the expressed but not quantified harm by continuing the status quo. Once we quantify both, let's talk.
- wayneftw 6y agoIf people keep badgering you to do anything, however seemingly benign, it affects you. How does it not affect you?
- mcphage 6y ago> this is being political correctness taking way to far Is this really all that far? Changing the default branch name? What do you feel would be taking political correctness just the right distance?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- verroq 6y agoIdiotic. Leftist virtue signalling at its finest. Congratulations you solved racism.
- twic 6y agoIt's virtual signalling because it can be overridden.
- twic 6y agoSo if i create a repo locally, where the default branch name is still master, commit some work to it, then create a repo on GitHub, where the default name is now main, then push my local repo to GitHub, will my commits appear on the repo page? Or will it present an empty main branch? I always create repos this way - i never create on GitHub then clone the empty repo. It would be annoying if this stopped working smoothly.
- ndepoel 6y agoThe repo is always going to be leading. If you create a repo locally with a master branch and push it to Github, it will still have a master branch on Github and all the commits will be visible normally. Github is not going to automatically add an empty main branch without your permission. The only difference is that Github might not assume the name 'master' for the default branch anymore, so you may have to change the default branch in the project's settings on Github. Possibly Github will detect that there's only one branch and set it as the default, or recognize 'master' as the initial default branch. We'll have to wait and see what the exact behavior will be. Either way it won't stop you from using a Git repo with traditional naming conventions on Github in any shape or form.
- bsdubernerd 6y agoMaster is used in dozen of other contexts to mean "primary", "source", "original". I found the name to be perfectly apt for the purpose. Are people changing the name for master records too? Should we change the term mastering? Context is everything in language. I find this case (and many others, to be honest) borderline stupid.
- eternalban 6y agoIt's one thing to own a printing press, but it is an entirely different league when you control the very language and its usage. This is a minor event in the larger context of control over the language of discourse. 1984 features control over language, and subsequent distortion of the meaning of words, as one of the main methods of societal control in the depicted dystopian society. ~ But playing this game can be fun! For example, my Apple Inc. supplied dictionary defines "main" using terms such as "dominance", "supreme", "paramount", "preeminent". So, it remains about "power", "position", and "authority". As some suggested, "default" would have served the stated functional purpose of the word switch, without substituting one power word for another: "a preselected option adopted by a computer program or other mechanism when no alternative is specified by the user or programmer: the default is fifty lines"
- stronglikedan 6y ago> Are people changing the name for master records too? Should we change the term mastering? I'm sure all that is already in the works, unfortunately.
- sebazzz 6y agoWaiting for the first pull request to rewrite all "Merged from 'master" commits because we can't have this in our repository history.
- skunkworker 6y agoI’ve had this conversation with some people. If someone asked Jay-Z if he owns his masters. Do you think he would get offended by the word? I see it almost as a failing of the English language, to have one word represent so many different meanings.
- mcphage 6y agoIt's clear by all the negativity that people here care a lot about this, but I really don't understand why. What's so important about keeping the name of the branch "master"?
- postalrat 6y agoWhat assumptions would you make if you say these three branches in a repo: trunk, master, main. Versus if you just saw trunk and main.
- mcphage 6y agoI think I'd be pretty confused in both cases—I've never seen people use "trunk" as a branch name, so I don't know what it would mean to them. I mean, personally I think "trunk" makes the most sense as the default branch, so I would like to assume that's the default branch, but, with 2 or 3 of them, I'd mostly wonder how they all got there.
- kortex 6y agoI'd look at the graph, cause sometimes you end up with a stale master/main and everyone pushing to "develop" and cutting releases from that. Heck, I worked on a repo where "master" was 2 years untouched, "rc" was like 8 months untouched and effectively deployment, "next" was effectively the release candidate but also used in production elsewhere, so it was gated like it was a master branch, and everything else was dev. Yeah.
- mad182 6y agoI personally don't care how it's named, but it seems silly to change a commonly used word because one of its multiple meanings in a completely different context is associated with something bad. If we are going this route, just in case we should also remove the word "default", because it means failure to repay a debt, to avoid upsetting somebody in a tough economic situation.
- mcphage 6y ago> but it seems silly Yeah, it is pretty silly. But we do a lot of silly things; this one seems pretty far down the list. > we should also remove the word "default", because it means failure to repay a debt, to avoid upsetting somebody in a tough economic situation That's an interesting idea. Are you personally offended by the term 'default'?
- yepthatsreality 6y agoBut if people create a branch locally, no change it’ll still default to master in git right? Who starts writing code or a repo by creating it on GitHub first?
- 52-6F-62 6y agoYes, no change locally. This is the company deciding how they want repos started on their service to operate by default. That's it. I'm surprised it's drawing so much ire.
- j4nt4b 6y agoI'll be impressed when people start lining up to burn their passports in protest of war crimes committed by their countries. But this is free and easy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ithkuil 6y agoIs there a way to create branch aliases? Some repo I use still use master, some have main. I can retrain my muscle memory (and my scripts) eventually, but having both of them coexisting around in my various projects directories is already biting me. I honestly don't mind about the name (and if it weren't for muscle memory i think main is nice and short; perhaps "tip" would have been even shorter)
- ogre_codes 6y agoSomeone pointed out if you have autocomplete "ma[tab]" works with both.
- ithkuil 6y agoI often mistyped master as mater, which wouldn't be a horrible name either: the mother of the branches
- outworlder 6y agoOh great. "Master" is now "main". Let's check the etymology of "main": --- Old English mægen (Mercian megen) "power, bodily strength; force, violent effort; strength of mind or will; efficacy; supernatural power," from Proto-Germanic maginam "power" (source also of Old High German megin "strength, power, ability"), suffixed form of PIE root magh- "to be able, have power." Original sense of "power" is preserved in phrase might and main. Also used in Middle English for "royal power or authority" (c. 1400), "military strength" (c. 1300), "application of force" (c. 1300). Meaning "chief or main part" (c. 1600) now is archaic or obsolete. Meaning "principal duct, pipe, or channel in a utility system" is first recorded 1727 in main drain. https://www.etymonline.com/word/main https://www.etymonline.com/word/main --- Maybe it's an improvement. But not a big one (oh wait, 'big' is also 'power').
- danfritz 6y agoIn 2 years we all frown on main and think how stupid it was and we change it to default /sarcasm?
- kortex 6y agoI don't think main is as fraught, see the AAVE/historic dialect pronunciation of master "massa" and the baggage therein. Master much more clearly implies the antonyms "slave" "servant" "underling". to me, "main" doesn't have one single strong antonym, it's more contextual, but could be side, alternate, aux, etc.
- MrStonedOne 6y agoLanguage is way too nuanced for us to allow the negative uses to infect the non-negative uses. This whole thing is stupid. Its normalizing treating language and words in a "gold nugget in a pile of shit" sort of way. If you could tell me that this whole push would not also come with a slowly growing judgement of people who don't conform to this new nomenclature it would be easier for me to not care. But thats never how these things work, and I can't really support adding more and more landmines for people to stumble over in social situations for no gain. And it all comes back to context. Allowing bad contexts to infect other contexts just isn't maintainable. Its unneeded mental load to social situations, and it runs counter to how language functions.
- kettlecorn 6y agoI like this change. “main” is more easily understood. Presumably GitHub will be around for a while so this change will forever make it a little bit more straightforward for people new to GitHub. Additionally if anyone says that they’d benefit from the change then I think it’s best to take them at their word because the cost to change is not high.
- postalrat 6y agoIs parent/child offensive to anyone? I'd like to know sooner so I can plan for the future.
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y agoomg is this real?? "The default branch for newly-created repositories is now m-word (github.blog)"
- andy-x 6y agoSwitching back to master immediately. "main" is much more offensive _to me_.
- andy-x 6y agoPlus I totally expect that the same people who were "offended" by master will get "offended" by main very quick.