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Locking comments. Had a good run, over half a day, but this was always headed for an emotional train wreck.
mainin the streets,masterin the sheetsI get wanting to move away from “master,” but why in the world didn’t we use “trunk”
It was already a standard name, and it fits “branches,” etc.
I would have loved to go back to trunk. Also main and master have different meanings.
It’s a retroactive bastardization of the word based on one particular culture’s one particular interpretation of it (master being, apparently, a slaveowner) that ignores both the much earlier meanings of master artisan or master craftsman (as opposed to journeyman and apprentice) and masterpiece (through which an artisan is recognised as a master), and the modern meaning of a master copy (like a master record in disc printing).
This isn’t like replacing the “master and slave” terminology with regard to connected devices. That one was warranted because it was often inaccurate and confusing. But forcing the adoption of main instead of master feels like someone got offended on someone else’s behalf because a word looked superficially like that other bad word, and apparently we can’t have an understanding that goes deeper than what letters it’s made up of.
Amerika ist wunderbar. This is an
--initial-branch=masterhousehold.regardless of that, it’s never inconvenienced me and it’s still a net gain in readability, since
mainactually means what it means. have my shell scripts set up to use either one for any repo I’m in automatically.Honestly it’s not even about convenience. As far as breaking conventions go, this one has none-to-minimal impact – existing
masterbranches won’t suddenly become invalid. But it’s yet another instance of a subset of a subset of a subset of users getting to enforce their sensibilities for superficial reasons, and ultimately with zero effect regarding the cause they claim to represent; cultural and linguistic differences be damned.I’d love to be more specific, but I don’t want the comments to turn into a warzone.
This isn’t like replacing the “master and slave” terminology
I struggle with SPI (serial peripheral interface). Two of the pins are MOSI/MISO (master-out-slave-in and vice versa). There are some alternative namings, but this one seems especially ingrained in embedded dev
At some point needlessly banning words just empowers bigots by letting them claim larger and larger parts of the vocabulary. Shouldn’t we try to reclaim words instead, and deprive the words of their power? Just “banning” words, especially in cases such as this one when the connection to master/slave is pretty weak, actually increases the negative power of the words and I’d argue empowers people with malicious intent
YES, BASED
IN THIS HOUSE WE COMMIT TO MASTER
I personally don’t think the word “master” should be considered offensive - my wife has a master’s degree in deaf education - but I’ve switched to “main” because that seems to be the convention now and it really doesn’t have to be an issue.
There’s no “slave” convention in git so I’m not sure how it can be considered an issue (I get that drives being master and slave is a bit icky). But then, what is it a master of?
As others have said, “trunk” would have been a more sensible replacement.
It’s a master the same way that an original recording (the final version before mass reproduction) is called a master; mixing and processing the raw media clips into such a recording is called mastering. It’s a convention that has existed long before computers were a thing.
I find “master” offensive, so I make sure I main bate instead.
Honest question. I cannot see if you are being serious here. If this is a real thing, is it because of US slavery history? No way you are saying your wife has a main degree in deaf education?
No, I said I don’t think the word “master” is inherently offensive - after all, my wife has a master’s degree. But to answer OP’s question, I’ve switched to “main” as my git branch because that seems to be the new convention.
Master. I find this out of context fight against words pathetic.
My scrum master said that we need new tickets to update the git branches and pipelines to use main instead of master since master was a bad word.
I asked him what his job title was again and there was a pause.
Then he said we can’t say that we are going to groom the code base anymore.
I’m gonna go ahead and assume your scrum main doesn’t groom themselves.
If we are not grooming the codebase, are we then waxing it?
Or is it more eco-friendly to let the codebase grow wild and untrimmed?
I know someone with a master’s degree from university.
Well, he cut me a golden master copy of the track, anyway.
“I main in science degree of Evolutionary Biology” has a weird ring to it.
I main Evolutionary Biology and have alts in Chemistry and Anatomy.
Nice
I kinda unironically dig this.
I agree that it’s pathetic. I’ve never been a fan of virtue signaling.
In the other hand, “main” is easier to type than “master” (or “trunk,” for that matter). So I’ve made peace with it.
Trunk would be better because of all the branches.
Why master? main is much clearer
Why not change “walkie talkie” to “radio phone”? It is so much cleaner.
Because change for the sake of change always brings more work than what it saves.
Why change something that works and everyone recognizes it? Of course, if this debate was there when the standard was created…
Because it is a historically settled down terminology that everyone understands and there is no adequate reason to change it.
everyone understands
no, new people learn git every day.
‘main’ is much clearer. It’s maybe not the same readability gain as ‘blocklist/allowlist’ over ‘blacklist/whitelist’, but it’s still there.
Why main? m is much clearer
we should make the empty string the name for the default branch
I can work with either, but I cannot and will not forgive any deliberate changes from main to master.
If you have a main and a master branch in the same repo and you don’t delete one at the very start of the project, God has abandoned the living bcz we’re lost and he has forsaken all that is good in the world.
I didn’t mean both simultaneously in the same project, lol.
Naming my branches like I name my word documents: master, main, main2, main2_FINAL, main_master, main_master_main, master_SUBMITTED, master_REVISED, master_REVISED_main_FINAL2,…
This one, officer, this one right here.
You monster! There are children here!
Master_blaster
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I did that once… Because a script I worked with was hardcoded for it and was distributed as a binary…
Just use
main. I’m not bothered by either, but I’m not in the demographic that would be bothered bymaster, so I usemainand STFU. It takes way less effort to switch tomain(if you haven’t already) than to come up with all this rhetoric about whymastershouldn’t trigger people.I would argue that it’s best/easiest to leave existing projects on master, and just use main for new ones. Either way I agree, people arw reactionary af about this issue
That’s why we switched, on both closed- and open-source projects. There’s just no winning an argument that puts you on the same side as racists.
At one point I was considering how, if someone asked on one of our public repos, I’d say “no” but at the same time post a receipt for a donation to the NAACP just to prove I wasn’t racist. Thankfully I realized how stupid an idea that was before it came to that.
Performative wokeness is a cancer, man. Did any of this arguing and vitriol actually help any marginalized group in STEM? I really fucking doubt it.
canonLove it 😆
No one commits to
trunkanymore…
I think you are onto something. Especially Mastodon devs are losing so much.
master
I grew up with master, and main just feels weird.
Whatever the repo is setup with.
I always rename my branch to main. Because it’s shorter? That’s the extent of my reasoning. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
The default branch for some projects is “production” since CD deploys on pushing to that branch
For new projects, main. My thought is that even if master is not offensive, since the industry has generally made the change, the only reason to stick with master is stubbornness or hating political correctness, neither of which aligns with my self-view so I’ll use main and move on.
In general if people are genuinely hurt by the use of some words, I’m not sadistic so I’ll avoid using them. From my perspective morality is the pursuit of the reduction of suffering, even if that suffering is internal.
It kills me that this take is so hard to find online.
Did I think calling the main branch “master” was offensive before this controversy? No, I’d never even considered it.
Does switching to calling it “main” impact me, like… at all? Also no. It’s like the lowest effort change to make.
If I can make my industry more welcoming to a more diverse group of people, that is a solid victory and way more important than the name of my primary git branch.
I mean, the problem people have with it isn’t a name change or improving inclusivity. It’s the fact that they feel like they are being bullied into doing something they had no input into in the name of inclusivity. What pisses people off is how, as soon as someone says “x” isn’t maximally inclusive of some marginalized group, everyone has to change or else get called a categorically bad person.
For example, suppose you have a red hat that you enjoy wearing. You got it at wafflefest a decade ago, and it says “I <3 Waffles”. Then one day, your boss sends out an email that no more red hats are allowed in the office because it might create an unwelcoming environment. You will, of course, be pissed off. Not because you can’t wear your waffle hat anymore, but because your boss feels entitled to control the minutiae of you life like this. You’ll think to yourself “fuck that guy, and fuck whoever brought up banning red hats in some corporate board room 1000 miles away. This is bullshit!”
People like their autonomy, and don’t like being controlled. Doesn’t matter if it is in the name of increased corporate profits, or inclusivity, or saving the bees, or dying of lung cancer. They don’t care about the name of their git branch - they care that they feel like they are being forced to change it.
That analogy doesn’t really apply though. The decision to change master to main was a collective one, not made by “some corporate board room 1000 miles away”. It may feel like that’s how it went down because you only noticed when GitHub changed their defaults or whatever, but that decision was not made in a vacuum, it was the result of lots of people saying “hey, this is a problem, let’s fix it” for a long time before any actions were taken.
Don’t forget laziness. I have some projects that have been around forever and I am not changing it across my infra because I am lazy. I will do it next year…
In general if people are genuinely hurt by the use of some words, I’m not sadistic so I’ll avoid using them
That’s a sane position. Only issue is that this have nothing to do with the question, and the people that were the most vocal about this issue had no business talking about it in the first place.
Ultimately, git is flexible; beyond some potential local and shared automation, anyone can call their local branches however they want, regardless of other and servers. Personally, changing years of habits and tooling (that probably should not have hardcoded some names in the first place) is not worth following a change proposed by misled people.
Master. I find the whole “reasoning” behind the controversy absolute horseshit peddled by nontechnical people on the sidelines
Just that master doesn’t actually makes much sense in most git workflows.
If you understand master like you would understand the master/slave relationship in old tech, then of course, master seems to make sense until you realize that there is no slave in that sense or in name. Additional, master is rarely doing anything but having release or hot fixes being merged into it. Arguably dev is the master of the branches.
In other words, master was always a bad name. It is silly to rename it because “racism” but it is at least equally silly to act like master is a much better name than “main” or “live” or “prod” or … Fuck, the list is long.
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Based. We need to make music industry use Main records and not Master records from now on!
“Trunk records” for indie music seems 110% appropriate to me.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/master
contrastive adjective (“he who is greater”)
This is not to say that the term predates slavery and is neutral today in pejorative terms.
Music used it because the original is of greater quality. The term is technically and syntactically correct here.
Slavery used the term correctly, extensively and horribly. Honestly, it tainted it.
Most of the people who say it’s no big deal or they don’t care have ancestors who were on the unimpacted or positively impacted side of slavery. Very “let them eat cake” tones. (even though that story itself is a misnomer)
To be perfectly honest, the term in its etymological roots doesn’t fit well in the digital age for common use cases. It’s fallen into common parlance from the analog era, when it had a more direct meaning. Even though it’s not regularly being used as a pejorative, there’s (not zero, but) little harm in slowly phasing it out for better, more accurate terms like main or trunk or origin.
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I’m not going to be bullied by liberal arts partisans into reconfiguring how my brain works
I hate to tell you this, but that’s a fascist argument using tradition to block out change and accepting others. It’s a screw those other races/religions history and feelings because it makes me feel less powerful kind of statement. I doubt that’s your intent, but there it is.
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the master/slave relationship in old tech
The master branch is called master not because of slavery. It’s a master copy of the code
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You know that master has multiple meanings?
Master of a slave is one of them.
Master is also the title you get when you master sth.
So the thing is that master was probably a thing before slaves were invented (I guess).
before slaves were invented
Like, before the invention of agriculture?
Master debater
Ding ding ding. Trend-hopping C-suites pretending to give a fuck because DEI or whatever.
