Re: Rename offensive terminology (master)

From: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 15, 2020, 21:38 UTC
Message-ID: <CABPp-BF8vo_fCbM1ct0MYFhQcVmPwfq7_Q3Fd+SnM0=gVmxkrQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.2006091126540.482@ZVAVAG-DN14RQO.ybpnyqbznva>

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 2:34 PM Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

Show 33 quoted lines

>
> I have reached out to Billy Griffin (the PM of GitHub Desktop) to learn
> what might be good candidates for the default branch name, as GitHub
> Desktop changed their repository's main branch name recently. This is what
> he told me:
>
>         [W]e did some research looking at the data at GitHub of the most
>         commonly used default branch names other than `master`. Most of them
>         were things like develop, release, staging, stable, production, etc.
>         that denoted some stage of the software lifecycle. We thought that
>         none of these are good options because a universally applicable
>         default name should allow for teams and projects to work in
>         different ways (and obviously if teams want to change it to reflect
>         their workflows, they're free to do so just like they do today - we
>         use `development` as the default branch in desktop/desktop, for
>         example).
>
>         The three most common names that *weren't* in that category were
>         main, trunk, and source. "Trunk" has roots in SVN so there's some
>         precedent for it, but we've heard feedback that it's not
>         particularly intuitive for non-native English speakers, and "source"
>         in my opinion isn't accurate because it's only a single branch, not
>         the entire source. We've also seen "default" floated and it exists
>         in mercurial, but we've also heard feedback that it's potentially
>         sensitive due to financial default, so we might as well choose
>         something else if there's another good option.
>
>         For that reason, we're thinking that `main` would likely be a good
>         choice because the name corresponds nicely to its purpose as the
>         default branch of a repo. It's also conveniently short to type,
>         and tab complete would continue to *just work* for those concerned
>         about muscle memory because the first two letters are the same as
>         `master`.

Looks like they've done some good research; I'm glad someone has looked into it.

It probably doesn't matter at this point, but can I point out an additional issue with "default"? I worry it's quite likely to lead to confusion: does "default branch" mean the one named "default" or the one HEAD points to? For example, at $DAYJOB, hundreds of repos switched a few years ago to having "develop" be the default branch, but did not delete "master". Had the default branch been named "default", we would have been in a funny situation where "default" was not the default.

You may just think that's a humorous case, but it's more than that to me. Once upon a time in the Gnome community we had a theme called "default" that many people thought was rather ugly; a new theme was created with a different name that became the default, but for backward compatibility the old one had to retain the name "default". Soon there were lots of themes and almost no one directly used either of these two, but the release notes were required to use the default theme for screenshots (that is, the default theme, not the "default" theme). Anyway, wires got crossed and there were some massive, heated, protracted flame wars that engulfed way too many people (see https://blogs.gnome.org/newren/2005/03/15/poor-eugenia/). While the reaction there was blown way out of proportion (the flame wars really were unnecessary and having a code of conduct in place might have helped prevent some of that rather poor behavior on both sides -- myself included), there was a nasty problem that arose from a simple communication disconnect that was real. It could have all been avoided if "default theme" wasn't ambiguous and for the same reason, I don't want "default branch" to be ambiguous. Although I wasn't directly on either side of the Gnome fiasco and was just one of many that got pulled in as the whole project got dragged into the whirlpool of problems, I really don't want to be involved in a repeat of problems of the sort "oh! there's another default branch?!?"

Hope that helps, Elijah