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

Tanya Lattner via llvm-dev llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
Fri Jun 19 13:05:03 PDT 2020 

I can understand the want to not delay things unnecessarily. However, we are a large community and communicating a change like this should be done in a thoughtful manner so that everyone has enough time to make necessary changes to not cause any major disruptions to their company/project, etc. 

Christopher also brings up some great points about why or why we wouldn’t want to wait for Git/GitHub to determine what the new name is on their side. I’m not advocating for a 6 month timeline, but I suspect GitHub will be pushing to change sooner than later. 

-Tanya

> On Jun 19, 2020, at 12:25 PM, Eric Christopher via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> I disagree with your timing concerns. Changing is still straightforward and I'd like to see this done within 1-2 weeks.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -eric
> 
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 12:22 PM Chris Tetreault <ctetreau at quicinc.com <mailto:ctetreau at quicinc.com>> wrote:
> +1 to waiting until git and/or github decide on a new name for the default branch. I think there is a compelling reason to change the name of the default branch to match community expectations, if for no other reason. If we leave it  as “master” after git changes it, then we have to explain that we left it as “master” because we could not agree on whether or not “master” is non-inclusive. If we pick a new name that is not “master”, but does not match the default branch that git or github eventually converge on, we still have to explain why we are different. If we change it twice, then we have to incur the non-zero cost associated with making the change twice, which I feel would be a waste of community resources.
> 
>  
> 
> I do not believe that we need to change it as soon as physically possible. I think we can clearly document (say, in the readme on github), that we intend to change it once the community converges on a new name. We can provide a deadline (say, 6 months) for the community to decide on a new default branch name before we make any change. If this deadline passes, then we can decide on a new name for the default branch and stick with it moving forward.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>    Christopher Tetreault
> 
>  
> 
> From: llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org>> On Behalf Of Keane, Erich via llvm-dev
> Sent: Friday, June 19, 2020 11:56 AM
> To: Eric Christopher <echristo at gmail.com <mailto:echristo at gmail.com>>; llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>>
> Subject: [EXT] Re: [llvm-dev] Inclusive language in LLVM: can we rename `master` branch?
> 
>  
> 
> To be clear: I’m concerned about the amount of our infrastructure (as well as downstream infrastructure, this would be actually pretty painful for both of my downstreams) that the community would have break/need fixing as a part of that.  So I want this to happen ONCE. 
> 
>  
> 
> I think it is well motivated now, but switching from ‘default’ to ‘main’ when that becomes the ‘standard’ one seems way less motivated.  So I just forsee it being a wart on the project for a very long time.
> 
>  
> 
> That said, I’ve done a bit of research and the git mailing list thread (https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAOAHyQwyXC1Z3v7BZAC+Bq6JBaM7FvBenA-1fcqeDV==apdWDg@mail.gmail.com/#t <https://lore.kernel.org/git/CAOAHyQwyXC1Z3v7BZAC+Bq6JBaM7FvBenA-1fcqeDV==apdWDg@mail.gmail.com/#t>) as well as just news reports about github, and they all seem to be converging on ‘main’, though I don’t have good insight into it.
> 
>  
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> If ‘we’ as a community (and I think we do?) have a contact at github could ping someone and get a reasonably quick confirmation that they are switching to ‘main’, it would be appreciated/should guide our decision.
> 
>  
> 
> From: llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org>> On Behalf Of Keane, Erich via llvm-dev
> Sent: Friday, June 19, 2020 11:48 AM
> To: llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>>
> Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] Inclusive language in LLVM: can we rename `master` branch?
> 
>  
> 
> My understanding is the biggest concern about the name change is the ‘cost’ associated with needing to update each of the individual buildbots (and my understanding is that this would be a somewhat non-centralized action) configurations.  So I think we’re talking about more than just 1 person running the script in 10 minutes.
> 
>  
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>  
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> From: Eric Christopher <echristo at gmail.com <mailto:echristo at gmail.com>> 
> Sent: Friday, June 19, 2020 11:44 AM
> To: Keane, Erich <erich.keane at intel.com <mailto:erich.keane at intel.com>>
> Cc: Petr Penzin <penzin.dev at gmail.com <mailto:penzin.dev at gmail.com>>; Mehdi AMINI <joker.eph at gmail.com <mailto:joker.eph at gmail.com>>; llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>>
> Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] Inclusive language in LLVM: can we rename `master` branch?
> 
>  
> 
> I mean, we could change it twice? There are about a hundred scripts out there for doing it.
> 
>  
> 
> -eric
> 
>  
> 
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 11:40 AM Keane, Erich <erich.keane at intel.com <mailto:erich.keane at intel.com>> wrote:
> 
> Do we have any ability to reach out to github (at least?) to see what they are going to do?  I’d very much like to avoid being the odd-project-out here.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> From: Eric Christopher <echristo at gmail.com <mailto:echristo at gmail.com>> 
> Sent: Friday, June 19, 2020 11:32 AM
> To: Keane, Erich <erich.keane at intel.com <mailto:erich.keane at intel.com>>
> Cc: Petr Penzin <penzin.dev at gmail.com <mailto:penzin.dev at gmail.com>>; Mehdi AMINI <joker.eph at gmail.com <mailto:joker.eph at gmail.com>>; llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>>
> Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] Inclusive language in LLVM: can we rename `master` branch?
> 
>  
> 
> There's really no guarantee that things will shake out the same in near term between the projects.
> 
>  
> 
> -eric
> 
>  
> 
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 11:31 AM Keane, Erich <erich.keane at intel.com <mailto:erich.keane at intel.com>> wrote:
> 
> I’m a bit mixed on this.  While yes, we should change this as soon as is practical, it would be a shame to pick something sufficiently different from the rest of the world, as that would be anti-inclusive (though in a technical way).  It would be REALLY good if we knew what github/git were GOING to name theirs and just do that as soon as possible.
> 
>  
> 
> From: Eric Christopher <echristo at gmail.com <mailto:echristo at gmail.com>> 
> Sent: Friday, June 19, 2020 11:23 AM
> To: Petr Penzin <penzin.dev at gmail.com <mailto:penzin.dev at gmail.com>>; Mehdi AMINI <joker.eph at gmail.com <mailto:joker.eph at gmail.com>>
> Cc: Keane, Erich <erich.keane at intel.com <mailto:erich.keane at intel.com>>; llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>>
> Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] Inclusive language in LLVM: can we rename `master` branch?
> 
>  
> 
> While I appreciate this sentiment we should not block our changes on a project over which we have no control. Changing the name and the documentation is easy and we should do this today.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks.
> 
>  
> 
> -eric
> 
>  
> 
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 10:49 AM Petr Penzin via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
> 
> +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> <mailto: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> <mailto:joker.eph at gmail.com>; llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> <mailto: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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