Why did you rename master to main?

[imbaniac]

In the context of git, the word "master" is not used in the same way as "master/slave". I've never known about branches referred to as "slaves" or anything similar.

On existing projects, consider the global effort to change from origin/master to origin/main. The cost of being different than git convention and every book, tutorial, and blog post. Is the cost of change and being different worth it?

PS. My 3 projects were using your lib and got broken thanks to the renaming. 😕

PS. PS. I'm glad I never got a master's degree in college!

[IJMacD]

I think it's just a bad English/mis-translation problem.

I'm guessing @pmmmwh assumed 'master' meant like 主 in 奴隸主 (slave owner/master).

Actually a better translation would be 師 like 功夫大師 (Kung Fu master).

The specimen copies are made from.

[rubyFeedback]

I think it's just a bad English/mis-translation problem.

I am not so sure. See rubocop where some people tried to insinuate that the name is a problem due to the US-centric protest movement against cop violence. So perhaps that is a similar situation for the protest movement in Hong Kong.

Personally I think it is a very bad idea to leverage political views, even if I may share them, through software.

[jchristin]

In the context of git, the word "master" is not used in the same way as "master/slave".

This is not what Bastien Nocera try to demonstrate here.

[Hanse00]

The primary branch in git can have any name by design.

Forcing people out of the habit to assume this branch would be called master, is a valuable lesson.

[pmmmwh]

Why did you rename master to main?

Well, there are a lot of reasons, with the main reason being that I am empathetic to what is happening out there and I agree with many other people that we should re-examine our choice of words to make the industry more inclusive.

Maybe you can read this thread for more background and why this matters.

In the context of git, the word "master" is not used in the same way as "master/slave". I've never known about branches referred to as "slaves" or anything similar.

As some have already mentioned above (with sources), this is obviously not the case.

The cost of being different than git convention and every book, tutorial, and blog post. Is the cost of change and being different worth it?

There are many projects that does not use the master branch as default. For example, Next.js uses the canary branch, the npm CLI and many more other projects uses stuff like prod, production, dev, develop, release, beta, head.

I'm not sure if there's any cost in terms of contributing either, especially when by design git can have any branch as default, and will not hinder your experience when you use something other than master. It just happens that most projects chose to be "lazy" (stick to default), opted to use master - and to be honest I think it is more about sentiment than actual engineering practices now.

My 3 projects were using your lib and got broken thanks to the renaming. 😕

I'm not entirely sure why this change will break your projects. I'll assume that you're using the git installation feature of package managers. There was never any guarantee that code in the repository (even in the default branch) is by any means "stable" and "resilient to change", so by adopting git installations with latest source code you're effectively agreeing to go bleeding-edge. I would assume that means you're ready for any breaking changes and broken installations, which is what happened here.

Since this is a Webpack plugin, you'll have to install and run with Node.js anyways, I would suggest you switch to install the released next tag instead - which is a guaranteed "stable" and "locked" version.

I think it's just a bad English/mis-translation problem.

I completely understand that master have two meanings:

1. A man who has people working for him, especially servants or slaves; and
2. An original recording, film, or document from which copies can be made.

As aforementioned, the usage of master as a branch most likely originated from the first meaning, so I'm not sure who is taking master out of context here. Words should not only be interpreted by how you think is sensible, but also by how it would be perceived by others.

I don't think my English is bad enough to misunderstand meaning of words in specific contexts, nor do I need translation to understand English properly, even though it is not my first language. Making assumptions about my language ability because I'm an Asian from Hong Kong is rude to say the least, and it completely ignores the fact that I did my homework and research before making the decision to switch.

So perhaps that is a similar situation for the protest movement in Hong Kong.

Again, this has nothing to do with where I'm from.

Personally I think it is a very bad idea to leverage political views, even if I may share them, through software.

Whether you agree or not, to me there's nothing in this world that is entirely apolitical - when there are people there is politics. You don't have to agree with my views, nor do I expect you to. Diversity and disagreement is what drives mankind forward.

In the end this plugin is a piece of software that I wrote and I'm just doing what I think is reasonable to make our community more inclusive.

[XANi]

@pmmmwh Do take into consideration that tools generally break if there is no master branch. Like you're going to get seemingly random branch checked out (from my testing it seems like the lastest one but don't take my word on that) when cloning the repo

[JacksonBailey]

Like you're going to get seemingly random branch checked out (from my testing it seems like the lastest one but don't take my word on that) when cloning the repo

I believe the checked out branch is the remote repo's HEAD branch. Run git ls-remote. In GitHub (and generally most git hosts I've worked with) HEAD is the repository's "default branch". See this for more info, specifically the "warning" where it mentions git ls-remote.

[nanonyme]

Just my two cents regarding how to interpret master as to git: consider that "to branch" means semantically "to make a derived copy" in context of git. It seems strange to me you feel "master" could not possibly refer to master copy. You are obviously allowed to call master branch whatever you want as long as it is configured to be the default branch in the project. Otherwise confusion will insue.

[daneren2005]

People shouldn't be relying on master being the default branch. But I agree with above that it's pretty obvious that master is not meant in terms of master/slave at all. This just seems like more pointless virtue signalling everyone has been doing lately. But hey, your project, your choice.

[Nowadays]

Mixing git with what's hapenning in the world is utterly stupid to say the least, and here I always thought, we developers, were supposed to be smart to do the kind of job we do.
You're using twitter as a source of information, why am I supprised.
I've seen people kneeling and kissing other people' feet, now that, the world is fked up, and you're a contributor of it being more fked up every day.

Why don't we reprint every book containing master while we're at it.

Maybe we should rename master degree as it might feel offending to soft people.

Stupidity, as its finest.

PS: I don't even know what this repo is about, It popped in my news feed.

[Israel-Laguan]

The best solution from my point of view for other people's repos that want to do something similar is create a canary, prod or whatever name you want to be deployment target (don't forget to change default in configuration), create a note in readme about the change (please make a separate article or blog entry, not explain all your reasons in the readme) and leave master branch to a cinder for backward compatibility for a couple of months.

The problem here is not about the name but about sudden changes in a production repository. I respect your views, but let's keep the code flow Professional. Even bump versions need notice and a transition, so maybe the same can be applied here or in any public available code repo.

[looked-at-me]

@pmmmwh

In the end this plugin is a piece of software that I wrote and I'm just doing what I think is reasonable to make our community more inclusive.

You are excluding beginners that may not be as familiar with the tools and what they do or how they work. You are putting up an extra barrier to entry for those without the knowledge required by not following an established standard.

The change you've made causes more exclusion than inclusion. Software development is already difficult enough, it doesn't need politics complicating it even more and putting beginners are a farther disadvantage than they already are at.

-A beginner once upon a time ago

[z000mer]

first of all, just wanted to say this is the most pointless rename of all time. just... why

I think it's just a bad English/mis-translation problem.

I'm guessing @pmmmwh assumed 'master' meant like 主 in 奴隸主 (slave owner/master).

Actually a better translation would be 師 like 功夫大師 (Kung Fu master).

The specimen copies are made from.

lmao, what even is this condescending comment??
and how did op's projects manage to break from a branch rename? gotta be a pretty good programmer to achieve that

[medifle]

I am wondering the next step these guys are thinking...
Do they want to change master degree to main degree in the future???
Or even further, deleting all master words in dictionaries, web and histories like 1984

🤢🤮