[llvm-dev] Inclusive language in LLVM: can we rename `master` branch?

[Petr Penzin via llvm-dev]

+1

Git uses `master` branch in quite a few places in its docs and `git 
init` produces a `master` branch. ideally, a change to git should drive 
all of this - that way there would be no confusion.

-Petr

On 6/19/20 10:45 AM, Keane, Erich via llvm-dev wrote:
>
> I agree with this.  As much as I dislike the name that I believe 
> github will choose, we should just do whatever everyone else is doing.
>
> Note that in addition to the github discussion, there is some 
> extensive discussion on the .git mailing list (IIRC) about choosing a 
> new name as well.  I hope github waits until that choses a name as well.
>
> *From:* llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> *On Behalf Of 
> *Philip Reames via llvm-dev
> *Sent:* Friday, June 19, 2020 10:39 AM
> *To:* Mehdi AMINI <joker.eph at gmail.com>; llvm-dev 
> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [llvm-dev] Inclusive language in LLVM: can we rename 
> `master` branch?
>
> +1 to the notion of changing the branch name in general.
>
> However, I think there's a practical aspect which needs considered.  
> Currently, "master" is the defacto convention used across many, many 
> projects.  There's currently a lot of conversation going on across 
> many projects about naming.  I think it's really important that rather 
> than just picking something that we wait and see what the new 
> convention is, and adopt that.  I've seen reporting that GitHub is 
> considering changing the default name for new projects.  If that does 
> end up happening - I hope it does - I think we should use whatever 
> name they pick.  Convention is critical for ease of use of new 
> contributors.
>
> Philip
>
> p.s. There's a bunch of other terminology in use which is potentially 
> problematic, but I'm intentionally restricting my response to this 
> one.  I think each deserves discussion on it's own merits.
>
> On 6/19/20 2:48 AM, Mehdi AMINI via llvm-dev wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     When we moved to GitHub a few months ago, we used without more
>     consideration the "master" convention to name our development
>     branch. On SVN it used to be just "trunk".
>
>     This naming is unfortunate
>     <https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-knodel-terminology-00.html#rfc.section.1.1> as
>     it can hurt some contributors
>     <https://dev.to/afrodevgirl/replacing-master-with-main-in-github-2fjf>,
>     and there is really no technical advantage that I know of to favor
>     this convention over another.
>
>     I am perfectly aware that `master` has other significations than
>     the master/slave meaning, and I personally never made this
>     association in the past. However I'm also able to recognize that
>     I'm privileged here, and that not everyone is in the same position.
>
>     As we intend to be an inclusive community, I propose that we
>     change the name of our development branch and that we adopt
>     instead a more neutral terminology for the LLVM monorepo. Possible
>     names are "dev", "trunk", "main", "default", ...
>
>     We need to plan a transition as all the bots will need to be
>     updated to track this new branch instead, but these are minor
>     technical details, nothing compared to the SVN->Git migration we
>     went through.
>
>     Since I'm on this topic, we should also likely look into the
>     pervasive use of whitelist/blacklist in the project.
>
>     Thoughts?
>
>     -- 
>
>     Mehdi
>
>
>
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