How to Rename Your Master Branch to Main | Hacker News Reader

How to Rename Your Master Branch to Main

kapwing.com

18 pointsjustswim36 comments

I don't think there is ANY slave connotation assosciated with git. Sure words do matter and your words are being used to see things that aren't there - the meaning of the word master has been added to by its use in git repositories and it was NEVER used in the way that is suggested here; the email thread claiming that it is used this way is dubious at best. Master, in addition to meaning "controller" means:

- main; principal. "the apartment's master bathroom has a free-standing oval bathtub"

Because it's a master bedroom everyone understands and feels FINE that this is okay. EVEN in a master/slave hard drive setup (this adds a new meaning too) it isn't about subjugating disk drives, it's about slavishly copying another master (main, principal) disk. I'm very sorry if you're offended by words being used for very specific technology purposes but it isn't right that everyone has to conform to your way of seeing the world.

EDIT: damn, glad to see that article has been flagged and at this point I'm so happy that hacker news does not allow politics.

[I'm Eric's cofounder] >>it isn't right that everyone has to conform to your way of seeing the world. We're not forcing anyone to conform to our worldview. We're just sharing our perspective and providing instructions for developers who do want to change their production branch to "Main"

Sure, I think there are good technical reasons to consider doing that, I just saw a load of strange commentary that race had something to do with the name of the principle branch in a git repository. And I stand by the fact that if you believe that you are seeing things that don't exist.

Don't be so fast though: the term "master bedroom" is similarly criticized (and probably with a stronger case for its removal). https://yochicago.com/is-master-bedroom-a-racist-gender-bias...

Sorry, it doesn't mean that in any dictionary or in anyone's mind either when they use the term, so you can argue it is being used to oppress people but I say the term master bedroom is perfectly okay.

I bring it up because if you meant to point to an iron-clad use of "master" without slave connotations, then you in fact actually brought up an equally (or more?) controversial example and therefore I don't think it helps the case. No one who is skeptical of "master branch" will be swayed by "master bedroom".

Probably against the rules to use iron-clad as well. The first warship to be iron clad was used in the US civil war by the confederacy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad_warship

This Game of Words will only stop when either the offended side gets tired of accusing others or the purportedly offending side gets tired of being accused of being 'insensitive'. It the former happens it is not hard to foresee a move to a new frontier of oppression. If the latter happens the game is over, people will no longer fall for these accusations. In other words, those who claim to be offended have to win the argument every time while those who are on the receiving end of these claims only have to win the argument once for the battle to be won.

In short, this strategy is doomed from the beginning since it can not be won and only serves to create discontent and division.

At risk of treading into dangerous territory, I've never actually seen any minorities uncomfortable about master being named as such, just non-minorities uncomfortable on their behalf.

Master dates back to 12th century latin and has numerous definitions, most of which have no connection to slavery.

This seems very much like modern slacktivism - a feel good action which doesn't benefit anybody, least of all the group it was intended to benefit.

Honestly, we could really use a movement around slacktivism. It's lazy, helps almost nobody, and it discredits movements in the eyes of the general public.

The name 'main' feels overloaded, just like naming the default branch 'default' or 'development', with the risk of "Who's on first?" confusion, especially when branching off branches.

"What branch are you on?" "I branched off the main development branch for this fix." "Like...the `main` main branch or the main branch for the feature?"

I like redis' rename of their default branch to `unstable`. Just like commits are tagged with the release numbers, the latest code that isn't yet versioned is by default 'unstable'. If the industry as a whole is going to make this change, I would prefer we choose a name that can be unambiguously referenced in conversation.

We use "mainline" instead. Same meaning, but it's a sufficiently uncommon word that there's little chance of ambiguity; it's very clear you're referring to a git branch.

fhtagn - Where bugs wait sleeping.

> If the industry as a whole is going to make this change, I would prefer we choose a name that can be unambiguously referenced in conversation.

It that case, though, we would name our default branch "stable". We don't allow pushes to master unless everything has passed our full test suite. I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing to have the development model hardcoded into the name of the default branch - I've certainly worked in long-lived repositories where we've changed the model over time.

Sure. I don't know if 'unstable' is the best name for everyone, but if the industry decides to spend the engineering time to rename default branches, we shouldn't be just be switching to the first synonym in the thesaurus, but a word that's actually more fitting than 'master'.

'mastering' is an artifact of vinyl and boxed software. Now that a lot of software is continuously tested and shipped, 'master' is not the right word for those processes. Even if you're shipping on-premise software, there rarely is a single 'master' copy anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_(audio)

As a side note, I've seen people try this, but there is no amount of testing that can guarantee stability. So, 'stable' feels like a false promise. Also, in the event of a bug causing downtime, _someone_ always has the ability to push directly to master and it's always possible that a fix might break a new commit's tests, even if it fixes the downtime.

> As a side note, I've seen people try this, but there is no amount of testing that can guarantee stability. So, 'stable' feels like a false promise.

Which, by the same argument, makes all branches unstable. Why would you want to name, arguably the least unstable branch in the mentioned scenario - unstable?

[only ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek]

May I suggest a name for that branch which does not conflict with other uses and is generally understood by most developers?

   master

Merriam-Webster gives several definitions for this word, one of which seems to fit this purpose very well indeed: (noun) an original from which copies can be made, especially: a master recording (such as a magnetic tape), (adjective) being or relating to a master from which duplicates are made, (verb) to produce a master recording of (something, such as a musical rendition)

You can use this one-liner to rename your confusingly-named default branch:

   $ git branch -m main master
   $ git status
   
   On branch master

"master" has meanings other than "owner".

I refuse to kowtow to political pressures that don't actually help minorities. What's next, Master Lock and MasterCard changing company names to Main Lock and MainCard?

Whenever I hear "master," I (and I believe most people) think of competence. Master Mason, Master Craftsman, Master Programmer, etc. That does not mean historically that those who worked for masters were slaves, as we had journeymen for example. You can take a look at the guilds in the Middle Ages as an example of this terminology.

This many times over.

Agree. Kudos for being thoughtful and reasonable and not falling victim to mob shaming from people standing on soapboxes of false moral superiority.

To add on and support this, I found this page: https://www.wordnik.com/words/master

Not overly familiar with Wordnik, but a summary examination of this page shows a demonstrable variance in different senses and meanings drawn from different dictionaries.

Check the etymology at the bottom; “Master” still retains this sense.

I refuse to even entertain the idea of this. “Master” has nothing to do with slavery and “slavery” is not unique to any group of people or race. Read a history book.

Renaming “master” to “main” helps absolutely zero people. It’s just some pathetic, low effort, virtue signaling.

I wonder how long until people start calling developers/projects racist because they don't make this change.

I'm curious to know who caused this change, but I have a strong idea at what kind of person it is.

It is really kind of shocking, because we had this whole book called 1984 where the party insisted that members use `newspeak` which was more politically correct. People thought it was insane and we used to have people and newspapers across the spectrum decry XYZ (whatever policy under debate) as being `like 1984`. Using `Orwellian` was a negative term.

And now, here we are, where we can't have an honest discussion about terms without automatically being slapped as racist despite multiple meanings of the same word.

This seems like a pretty disingenuous representation of the progress made under the pressure to use inclusive language.

When I was young, it was really popular to refer to things via homosexual slurs to show how cool you were. Can you imagine how much trauma such an action imparts on someone who is a part of said slurred out-group when it is widespread and socially accepted?

I think that all social change is imparted through pressure, and the pressure to use language in a fashion minimizing slurring, outcasting, and denigrating structures is important. It's true that in this instance, it may not make sense and may be an intrusion on you and what you feel - and that's okay. It's also important to put the same pressure back that says "this piece of language does not have negative connotations and taking it away is policing free speech".

Surely you see how it can be appropriate or not appropriate to push back given the subject material.

And this is back to where I commented recently about the "problem with 1984";

"I don't like the terms master/slave, they make me uncomfortable with the connotations of my ancestor's slavery, can we change them?" -> "NO MORE CAN A MAN BE ENTITLED TO THE CHOICE OF ASCII CHARACTERS ONE WOULD DEMAND IN A FREE COUNTRY! THIS IS THOUGHTCRIME BY THE BACKDOOR! ORWELL! TYRANNY! HAS EVERYONE FORGOTTEN 1984 ALREADY?!"

> "where we can't have an honest discussion about terms without automatically being slapped as racist despite multiple meanings of the same word."

Except we can have such a discussion, without being automatically anything, and many people do have said-discussions. There is no accusation of racism in The Article against people who aren't making the change, there is only a discussion of pros and cons and reasons. Same (so far) in these comments about the article.

Newspeak was not a "more politically correct" recommendation of words to avoid offending people, Newspeak was a reworking of the English language to make it literally impossible to think certain thoughts, and a combined revision of all historical records to wipe those ideas out completely.

Asking people to change "master" to "main" like the opening tweet in the article, "I'm doing this. Join me" is not tyrannically oppressive insanity. It's not trying to wipe historical evidence of slavery. It's not trying to change what you can think about.

Sure, the article itself is not "tyrannically oppressive insanity" like you say, but when major corporations start picking up these articles because they seem en vogue, it can become a little tyrannical in the workplace.

For instance, if this became a D&I initiative, speaking out against it could be... dangerous. It can have a chilling effect on other people who would otherwise not agree.

I suppose that has a lot to do with the culture at a workplace. Given the current political climate with race relations though, it does make it a little scary to oppose measures D&I related, don't you agree? It would be nice to have an environment where you can respectfully speak your mind without getting labeled and/or canned.

I suppose then that we should rename Master's Degrees to Main Degrees. ;)

I would like to hear chess grandmains' opinions on this.

"The main argument for changing "master" to "main" is to reduce the occurrences of problematic terminology in a team's codebase"

It's not problematic terminology unless you have problematic thinking, which seems to be more infectious these days than COVID.

Here's the big question: Who is defining "problematic"? Furthermore, what will be "problematic" 5 years from now?

I don't have a problem making this change if it actually makes people of African descent more comfortable in the workplace and programming communities. I can understand it more easily for terms like "master/slave", and terminology that defaults white to "good" and black to "bad".

My problem with this, though, is that it feels like the ultimate in "slacktivism" mainly put in place to make white people feel better about themselves. I have rarely (or, actually, never, but to be honest I haven't scoured Twitter looking for posts) seen black people pushing for these kinds of changes (as opposed to many other areas where changes would actually make a difference in the workplace).

Thanks I was devastated by the word "master" and now I feel very, very "welcome"

I honestly don't know why people are resisting these sort of changes so much. I think it's due to Parkinson's law of triviality.

It's so easy for people to have an opinion on this, when I would rather change the offending name and move on to more important things.

Personally, I like the name trunk, since it makes more sense with the branching metaphor. But ultimately, call it whatever you want, I'll adapt.

I work at a $BIGCO and am inclined to do this, not because it will make any difference, but because it is the sort of thing they will do eventually, and if I raise it as an issue, it will look good for me.

The company is extremely good at pointless tediousness anyway (our issue types in jira have been changed three times in the last year, and I could not even tell you what a bug is any more), so more busywork will be par for the course.

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