
Easily rename your Git default branch from master to main - GiorgioG
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/EasilyRenameYourGitDefaultBranchFromMasterToMain.aspx
======
RenaudWasTaken
This discussion already happened multiple times on the git Mailing list. e.g:
[https://public-
inbox.org/git/CAOAHyQwyXC1Z3v7BZAC+Bq6JBaM7Fv...](https://public-
inbox.org/git/CAOAHyQwyXC1Z3v7BZAC+Bq6JBaM7FvBenA-1fcqeDV==apdWDg@mail.gmail.com/T/#u)

From: Konstantin Ryabitsev

Git doesn't use "master-slave" terminology -- the "master" comes from the
concept of having a "master" from which copies (branches) are made:

[https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_recording](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_recording)

The concept predates the music business and goes back to middle ages when a
guild master would create a "master work" or "master piece" that the
apprentices could use for study or for imitation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_craftsman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_craftsman)

~~~
DC-3
I'm astonished anyone ever thought otherwise. Has anyone ever encountered a
git branch called 'slave'?

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
Here's roughly 4,000 instances of branch names containing 'slave' for you to
peruse:

[https://github.com/search?q=head%3Aslave](https://github.com/search?q=head%3Aslave)

~~~
arp242
There's a quite a few false positives in that list (e.g. a person named
"slavek" always using his name in branch names), a few references to the
"master/slave" analogy, and browsing the first few pages I keep seeing the
same usernames over and over again (mostly from what seem to be non-native
English speakers).

So the number seems much lower than 4000, and mostly the result from a very
small group of people. I don't know how many branches there are in GitHub, but
this seems like a very very small percentage.

~~~
smitty1e
It has become increasingly obvious that the Roman alphabet and English
language must be replaced due to their overwhelming historical baggage.

~~~
Kednicma
Replaced with what, though? Nobody talking about "slave" seems to notice that
"servant" and "robot" have similar baggage despite different linguistic roots.

~~~
alwillis
_Nobody talking about "slave" seems to notice that "servant" and "robot" have
similar baggage despite different linguistic roots._

As I sometimes say, I've been Black my entire 50+ years on the planet. I've
never met another Black person (or anyone regardless of their race or
ethnicity) that felt that _robot_ has “similar baggage” to the word _slave_.

------
0xy
It's hard to take this as anything more than PC nonsense gone mad. Context is
important. Master branches are not perpetuating slavery and this kind of lazy
political thinking that words have singular meanings and must be banned is
dangerous and scary.

Master can also refer to a term used in the BDSM community for totally
consensual purposes. Should we be demonizing them too? How regressive.

~~~
wokwokwok
It costs basically nothing to do this if you feel strongly about it.

It costs you _literally_ nothing if you don’t care / don’t agree and don’t do
it yourself.

Just live and let live; is being outraged by it not just as bad as what you’re
criticising?

Should we care what other people call their branches now?!!? How regressive.

~~~
pensatoio
We should all care, because the larger cultural trend is a detriment to free
thought and speech.

------
meddlepal
But master in git has nothing to do with master-slave... it's nomenclature
derives as far as I can tell from the idea of a master copy which is the
authoritative version of something.

~~~
alwillis
_it literally doesn’t matter what the original rationale for the naming was.
impact outweighs intent. and if it impacts even one person, the intent just
doesn’t matter._
[https://twitter.com/vaidehijoshi/status/1271555823714488320?...](https://twitter.com/vaidehijoshi/status/1271555823714488320?s=21)

~~~
meddlepal
Meh, I find that argument less than compelling and a slippery sloap.

But hey who am I to judge what is a good or bad use of people's time and
political capital?

I'll stick with calling my main branches master and if someone doesn't like it
they can fork it and keep their own special version just for themselves.
Freedom!

------
dgrin91
I think this is a great example of people taking virtue signaling to points of
stupidity. Master-slave being problematic is something I can get behind, but
git's master branch isn't even referencing the master-slave analogy.

What about people who are really good at something? Should we never call them
masters? Just experts? I'm now a chess GrandExpert? I have an Experts degree?

You're burning a lot of political capital to change things that really don't
matter instead of things that do.

~~~
derivativethrow
I appreciate the cogency of your broader point, but please reconsider using
the terminology "virtue signaling."

When one person accuses another of virtue signaling, even implicitly, there
are typically only two possibilities:

1\. They hold such a cynical worldview that it's reasonable and coherent to
criticize someone else for attempting to publicly advocate for what they
_honestly_ believe to be right, or

2\. They believe the other person is _not_ being honest in their advocacy, and
more importantly that they should call the person's integrity into question by
opening that up for discussion.

When you label another individual's behavior as virtue signaling, you forcibly
shift the focus of discussion on that person's behavior and identity rather
than the thing they're advocating. This can have a chilling effect on people
voicing their opinions with honesty and authenticity. Likewise if an idea if
worth critiquing, it should merit criticism on its own without calling into
question its advocates' motives.

I don't mean to pick on you in particular, I'm just calling out the use of the
term.

~~~
SilasX
I use "virtue signaling" for something like:

3\. Advocacy that mainly serves to make the advocate sound virtuous rather
than substantively address the difficult aspects of a difficult tradeoff or
help to wisely deploy resources in a way that will make progress on a problem.

It's distinct from your 1 in that it accepts that people can exist who
legitimately care about improving the world.

It's distinct from your 2 in that it doesn't assert the person's advocacy is
dishonest (or otherwise not heartfelt), only that their specific contributions
are unhelpful or present a bad framing.

Example of a useful difference that 3 highlights:

Virtue signaling: "I just think we should help everyone wherever we can." ->
suggests that the speaker is particularly noble while also setting a herculean
standard for how to live one's life. (Really? Every single moment?)

Not virtue signaling: "As a rule of thumb, you should give about 10% of your
net income to charitable causes, since this is historically feasible, and
mainly would force you to cut back in ways that have disproportionately high
utility for others. Any more than that is nice, but is more than I can
legitimately ask." -> recognizes upper bounds in what they expect out of
others, and what might be feasible or excessive.

Naturally, most advocacy lasts more than two sentences, but that gives the
general idea.

~~~
bawolff
I feel like the term virtue signaling is used in a way that almost always
implies some implication of insinceerity, i.e. they are doing it for
popularity/upvotes/etc and not out of moral concern. As such i agree with the
other poster that it is in essence an ad hominem, although usually its not
solely an ad hominem but combined with some argument that the advocacy is
superficial or ineffective. (Although typically on the internet its a pretty
weak argument most of the time)

------
chomp
I'm pretty sure "master" in git refers to "gold master", which is the version
of software that is released to manufacturing. I've never heard of a slave
branch.

~~~
perryizgr8
We had a master branch that was actually named 'au'. It took me quite a while
to realize the connection.

------
pensatoio
I don’t believe anyone genuinely hears a word like this and thinks, “your use
of that word offends me due to its etymology.” I think it takes someone with a
certain immaturity to go searching for things that offend them and reenforce
their political bubble.

This is my definition of virtue signaling: Vapid action which serves no
purpose other than evoking a pat on the back from your politically-like-minded
peers. It’s not specific to a political party, but it disgusts me whenever I
see it.

~~~
alwillis
_it literally doesn’t matter what the original rationale for the naming was.
impact outweighs intent. and if it impacts even one person, the intent just
doesn’t matter._
[https://twitter.com/vaidehijoshi/status/1271555823714488320?...](https://twitter.com/vaidehijoshi/status/1271555823714488320?s=21)

~~~
pensatoio
My point is that it impacts zero people.

I don't believe a single person feels the impact of this change.

~~~
alwillis
That’s not true—I have been impacted. Others I’ve been in touch with have also
been impacted.

------
mythrwy
Next up we can get rid of the word "Mister" (or Mr.) which derives from the
word master.

I believe in that case master actually is (or was) used in the sense of a
master/servant relationship.

------
KayL
Are you going to rename hanselMAN?

I've done a quick search on your blog and find many "Master" related articles.
e.g.,
[https://www.hanselman.com/blog/CompleteHanselminutesMasterFe...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/CompleteHanselminutesMasterFeed.aspx)

BTW, calling main feed as master feed is unusual. Adding your own name inside
is unusual also.

------
jerzyt
What should I do now with my Masters degree?

------
plerpin
Master/slave, OK, let's revisit those terms.

But this is a totally different context.

Should we rename a master's degree now? How about achieving mastery, is that
now a loaded term?

------
sorokod
"...has the benefit of starting with "ma" so that autocomplete <TAB> muscle
memory still works"

Is this acceptable? Shouldn't the muscle memory be changing as well?

------
lxeiqr
It's not even related to master/slave concept. How the hell is this
oppressive?

------
yjftsjthsd-h
Important detail that I don't see mentioned: Does this affect clones? If a
newcomer these a project and tries to clone it, does github knowing about the
default branch suffice to make that seamless other than a moment of confusion
if they try to look at the branches?

------
sayusasugi
Is this some misguided late April fools joke?

------
mongol
I am thinking of technical uses of slave in a real master/slave context - is
it not then really proper to use the term slave? A slave transmitter, only
retransmitting what the master sends for example.

------
lizardking
No

------
obvthrowaway2
Are we going to rename "masterclasses" too?

------
nitemice
Putting aside the reasoning, I still think this information is useful.
Changing the name of a branch can get pretty messy if you do it wrong.

------
AlexTrask
Should we stop using robot word?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot#Origin_of_the_term_'robo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot#Origin_of_the_term_'robot')

------
axegon_
Wat??? Yeah, sure, let's re-write Sonnet 57, the hell with William Shakespeare
/s

------
mberning
I can only imagine this will break a great amount of tooling around Git. I
also have never had anybody complain about this in real life, in any context
(drive jumpers, database nodes, or git branches). I remember within the last
few years Redis removed the slave terminology but kept master...

~~~
saagarjha
master is the default branch, but as this shows there’s no need to actually
name you default branch that. Tooling that treats that specific branch
specially is arguably broken to begin with.

------
fxtentacle
I keep mixing up his name with the rails guy

------
zachrose
Can you imagine being in a class to learn programming or something and your
teacher starts talking about how A is a master and B is a slave? Can you
imagine that your phenotype matches a minority population that was formerly
enslaved? Can you imagine that you're the only such person in your programming
class, and feeling everyone's eyes run over you when these terms are first
used? Can you imagine that being, if nothing else, a distracting or
unwelcoming experience?

Sure, technically git doesn't use both ends of this metaphor and it probably
comes from something like "gold master" in this case. But if you're throwing
up your hands like the underlying intent is absurd, maybe chew on it a bit
more?

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
To not be bothered, even though the 'master' analogy isn't applicable in the
context of git branches, is coming from a place of privilege. I hope the folks
saying such a change 'goes too far' could walk away after reading all the
comments with a delta on this point. To you (generically), it may not matter.
But we cannot project our own feelings onto others.

~~~
mpweiher
Who is projecting their feelings onto others?

 _Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture_

[https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-
majo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-
dislike-political-correctness/572581/)

' a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our
country.” '

And no, "Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness, and
race isn’t either."

Yes, the dislike is lowest among African Americans, but still at a whopping
75%.

So who supports PC? The _only_ group is progressive activists. What do they
look like, demographically? Rich, white, educated.

The author additionally ran a twitter poll: "Nearly all of my followers
underestimated the extent to which most Americans reject political
correctness. Only 6 percent gave the right answer. (When I asked them how
people of color regard political correctness, their guesses were,
unsurprisingly, even more wildly off.)"

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
This reduction seems to be drawing too many absolute conclusions. Only X
believes Y. Life is rarely that cut and dry.

~~~
mpweiher
> Only X believes Y.

The word "only" is a direct quote from the article:

"Progressive activists are the _only_ group that strongly backs political
correctness: Only 30 percent see it as a problem."

(My emphasis)

There are no "absolute" conclusions in my summary, it's all in the text,
mostly direct quotes, and the text is, as far as I can tell, a fairly straight
representation of the findings.

> Life is rarely that cut and dry.

But sometimes it is, such as in this case. The data are unequivocal.

Now, you are obviously free to believe that you are right and the (vast)
majority is wrong. But if you think that you have majority support for your
opinions then you are deluding yourself.

