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Goodbye Master, Hello...What?

Jason C. McDonald on June 29, 2020

Next week, we'll begin the process of renaming the master branch on all our repositories to something else. In case this movement in tech is a bit...
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yougotwill profile image
Will G

At a previous company I worked at we had master and develop where the latter was used for the latest work and master was the stable branch. Going forward in my own work I think I will use stable instead of master and keep develop as is. Seems pretty easy to me :)

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perpetual_education profile image
perpetual . education

We never understood why it was called 'master' - or really why it's called "production" either. No solution yet... but - 'devel' doesn't seem that fun. We always prefer 'random' over 'rand.'

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codemouse92 profile image
Jason C. McDonald MousePaw Media • Edited

Here's some of the history behind Git's use of master, from the guy who started using it.

But, yeah, I feel like edge is more fun, personally.

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scottshipp profile image
scottshipp

It has to be trunk! If you use the term 'branches' and 'working tree', a lot of order is restored to the universe (in my opinion) by calling the trunk of the tree what it is:

the trunk!

I've been so surprised about this discussion. I can't imagine calling it anything else.

Except . . .

The tide in the community seems to be inevitably toward main . . . and that's what my company has now adopted internally. Oh well.

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codemouse92 profile image
Jason C. McDonald MousePaw Media

Actually, I think you make a pretty good point. The only trouble in our system with calling it "trunk" is that we effectively have three trees: stable, fresh, and (now) devel. While changes generally flow devel -> fresh -> stable, that's not always the case. If there's a critical bug in stable, and we're working on a separate release on fresh, we would need to branch off stable, change things, run it through the CI/CD, and then land that branch directly to stable.

It's somewhat along the same lines as when one of our team members said it should really be "main" to indicate "the primary branch" โ€” even he agreed that didn't make sense once I explained that we had three primaries.

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scottshipp profile image
scottshipp

Three trunks . . . It's a hydra! :D

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trasherdk profile image
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TrasherDK

"some comments removed" :)

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codemouse92 profile image
Jason C. McDonald MousePaw Media

Yup, all the unproductive debate about whether master should even be changed, which I explicitly stated at the end of the article has no place in this discussion. ;)

Sometimes you have to take a hard line on intolerance.

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trasherdk profile image
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TrasherDK

Censoring opposing opinions is just another form of intolerance.

I have no opinion about what your choose to call your github branches. That's totally up to you,

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codemouse92 profile image
Jason C. McDonald MousePaw Media • Edited

Welcome to the paradox of intolerance: to support tolerance, one must be intolerant of intolerance. That means, no, I don't have to give voice to people baselessly criticizing the very real experiences of people wholly dissimilar to themselves.

Besides, there are other places to have this conversation about whether master should be renamed...although it's honestly been exhausted across multiple threads and articles. The only dissenters are people with absolutely no stake in the matter save a minor inconvenience in renaming a couple of things. Many of the people who have reason to care have already spoken.

From the DEV Code of Conduct:

Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment include:

....

  • Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences.

...

Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:

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  • Dismissing or attacking inclusion-oriented requests

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We pledge to prioritize marginalized peopleโ€™s safety over privileged peopleโ€™s comfort.

As the "pro-master" arguments are almost always in violation of those first two cited principles, I am merely exercising the third.

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trasherdk profile image
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TrasherDK

As noted before. I don't care what you call your branches. It's none of my business.
What I do care about is censorship. When you choose to make a political statement in a public forum, you can not delete responses you don't like. You opened the gate, now deal with the responses.

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codemouse92 profile image
Jason C. McDonald MousePaw Media • Edited

Literally not how it works, mate. Free speech doesn't mean hate speech is tolerable, especially not here. That is the literal exact reason "Hide Comment" was given to all authors.

If "I should be able to say whatever to whomever" is your philosophy, you're on the wrong platform.

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terpinmd

Phew

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