Re: RES: Can git change?

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Jan 25, 2021, 16:28 UTC
Message-ID: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.2101251650150.57@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>
In-Reply-To: <CAK8LAYUsebOau+XJ66fEesLm4MfMuxJjse0YL408-2jih1d1eg@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Patricia,

On Sat, 23 Jan 2021, Patricia B. C. wrote:

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> Yes, as Junio said, my intention was to understand a bit about what
> you were doing, so thank you for the explanation!
>
> The idea isn't really to imitate what you are doing, but just to use
> it as a benchmark to show that changing the name of the branch might
> not seem like an important thing, but it is a global movement that is
> being adopted by many renowned developers.

FWIW Git for Windows switched all of its repositories to use `main` as default branch name: its git/git fork, the build-extra, MINGW-packages, MSYS2-packages, git-sdk-32, git-sdk-64, git-for-windows.github.io, msys2-runtime, busybox-w32 and WinToast repositories:

	https://github.com/git-for-windows/

Show 8 quoted lines

> Quoting one of the comments on the discussion topic I raised:
>
> "It's only the default name for repositories created inside GitHub.
> Since our students only create their repositories locally on their
> computers with Git, I don't see how GitHub's decision will affect
> them. If Git decides to change over from master to main, and there is
> an industry-wide push to adopt this change (which doesn't seem very
> likely to me), then I might agree with you"

Any repository created on GitHub will have that branch name by default. Likewise on Azure DevOps. I fully expect the other hosters to follow at some stage, and also for `git init` to change the default in a future version (I am working toward that goal).

And I have to admit that I am somewhat concerned about your students if one of their instructors thinks that their education shouldn't prepare them for more than working locally on their computers. Aren't they at all interested in preparing the students for life after university? If so, they will most certainly be affected by GitHub's decision.

> So, I just wanted to show that guy that this is an industry-wide push :)

Maybe Git itself is not a good example for that. Bigger projects face dramatically bigger challenges replacing the default branch name because of the short term disruption caused by it. Nevertheless, a growing number of projects have already renamed their default branch, such as Snowpack (https://github.com/snowpackjs/snowpack) and the react-refresh webpack plugin (https://github.com/pmmmwh/react-refresh-webpack-plugin) but also bigger ones such as LLVM (https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project).

Ciao, Johannes