Re: Rename offensive terminology (master)

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

demerphq <demerphq@gmail.com> writes:

>> What I am trying to get at is, after changing the name that is given
>> by default to the primary branch in a newly created repositories by
>> "git init" to 'main' (which I am OK with, and it seems that the
>> major projects and repository hosting services will be doing anyway
>> with or without getting themselves in this discussion on this list),
>> wouldn't we risk the same "master master" confusion caused by and to
>> those newer users who learn 'main' is the word given to the primary
>> thing?
>
> Yeah I think it will still cause problems. If it was my call I would
> not choose "main" either. Having said that I do think it is a bit
> better than "master" however, as it leaves the term "master"
> unambiguously about repositories, and it leaves the term "main"
> unambiguously about branches.

Well, 'main' is clearly better than 'master' as there do not seem to
be so many haters of the former than the latter.

But you cannot escape from the fact that when you need to have one
special/primary repository among different ones, and each repository
has one special/primary branch among different branches (and you are
lucky that you have to only worry about two levels in this case), it
is inevitable that you risk the "master master" problem no matter
what, unless you choose different word for 'primary' at each level.

It may be that it is the default _branch_ name people are unhappy
about the use of word 'master', but I do not see the reason why
people would not be unhappy about your reference to the 'master'
repository of a project the same way.  So basing your argument to
rename the default _branch_ to 'main' (or any word that is not
'master') because of "master master" problem does not compute well,
which was my point.  'main' is not better than 'master' because you
want to keep using 'master' to refer to your primary repository.

> So yeah, I would say that "main" is slightly better than "master" but
> is still suboptimal from a comprehension point of view, and it is
> downright unhelpful for my $workplace (but I recognize that isn't a
> problem you should be considering in this discussion.)