Re: Rename offensive terminology (master)

[demerphq <demerphq@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 16 Jun 2020 at 09:43, Michal Suchánek <msuchanek@suse.de> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 09:36:59AM +0200, demerphq wrote:
> > On Sun, 14 Jun 2020 at 20:24, Sérgio Augusto Vianna
> > <sergio.a.vianna@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Ok, can you show me a single instance where "master" was confusing or
> > > not descriptive enough?
> >
> > A: "No you need to fetch master from the remote, then you need to
> > merge it to your local master and then push it to the master master".
> > B: "remote master, local master and master master. wtf kind of master is that?"
> Which falls on the wording of the FAQ, not the terminology itself. If
> you were confused I am sure there are ways to bring this up and even
> submit changes.

I think you missed my point entirely. Sergio asked how "master" might
be confusing, and I gave an example where real people found it
confusing. I have had the conversation I just outlined multiple times
while teaching devs to use git on repos with "master" as the default
branch. In fact at work we renamed "master" to "trunk" when we
migrated our old CVS to git about a decade ago exactly to avoid this
kind of confusion. Consider how this conversation goes for us:

A: "No you need to fetch trunk from the remote, then you need to merge
it to your local trunk and then push it to the master trunk".
B: "Ok."

Similarly when the perl project migrated to git we renamed "master" to
"blead" to reduce the possibility "master master" confusion.

So I would say there is ample evidence that reasonable people consider
the "master" branch name a bit confusing. Furthermore, claiming that
the existence of a FAQ somehow makes this term not confusing is a bit
strange, as I would say that if you need a FAQ to explain something it
is not very obvious to start with so you are essentially proving my
point for me.

Personally *I* have no problem understanding what the "master" branch
is, I am pretty deeply familiar with how git works, I just think it is
an inherently bad choice of default name for a distributed version
control system for reasons entirely unrelated to it being also a term
related to slavery. The latter to me just makes changing the default
and/or providing easy ways to customize it all the better a move as
ultimately it will produce less confusing and more inclusive software
with little to no real cost to anyone else.

cheers,
Yves


-- 
perl -Mre=debug -e "/just|another|perl|hacker/"