main
in the streets,master
in the sheetscanon
Mommy.
MOAB (mother of all branches)
git checkout mommy
I can work with either, but I cannot and will not forgive any deliberate changes from main to master.
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=master
household.regardless of that, it’s never inconvenienced me and it’s still a net gain in readability, since
main
actually 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
master
branches 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.
People: hey you should think about this a bit and consider changing it to have a small positive impact
You: 🤬
Nobody’s forcing you to, nobody’s yelling at you, if you don’t do it it’s not a massive deal, you’re just yelling at clouds. Actually that’s not entirely true; I’m yelling at you because of your absurd overreaction to the mere idea of being a little thoughtful.
I don’t know if you got it from media, or you heard about this movement and for some reason immediately jumped to “they’re forcing us!”, but you really need to do some self reflection on why you got it so wrong and why you were so quick to do this outburst.
No one commits to
trunk
anymore…Using master is stupid. Is your branch in charge of others? Is it more skilled than your other branches? Software engineering has too many crusty dorks that stick to their paradigms like it’s their religion. Acting like it’s their heritage to use outdated terms but also it doesn’t matter so that’s why they’ll keep using it.
The name have nothing to do with being in charge of others, skill level, or anything, but, sure.
Calling an original, analogue recording a master does make sense, as all copies of it will by nature be of a lesser quality. This isn’t the case for git branches tho.
Personally I’ve come to hate main because it breaks habits easily. I’m working 75% of the time on master repos, but then I might need to do a quick edit on a main repo and suddenly my git checkout master doesn’t work.
Or even copy pasting scripts from one project to another can easily break if you forget to change the branch
The reason behind the change is pretty stupid anyway (I’m against slavery but it shouldn’t be treated like a slur still)