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

Philip Reames via llvm-dev llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
Fri Jun 19 13:41:39 PDT 2020


Can I suggest that we pick a day well in advance to make the changes, 
but leave the exact naming TBD?  This solves two problems.

  * If the broader community settles on a consensus of naming in the
    meantime, we follow.  This would ensure that we do eventually act if
    no consensus emerges, but gives us a chance to follow consensus if
    one does rapidly emerge.
  * Having a date picked give downstream folks time to plan and adjust.

I'll throw out July 15th as a reasonable date.

Philip

On 6/19/20 11:50 AM, Eric Christopher via llvm-dev wrote:
> That's a good point, we should definitely be respectful of the build 
> bot owners time, that said I think it's the coordination that takes 
> the time rather than the change :)
>
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 11:48 AM Keane, Erich via llvm-dev 
> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
>
>     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.
>
>     *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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