Hi Junio,
On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 6:02 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Simon Pieters <simon@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > If someone is interested in helping with this, please follow up with
> > Don. But I would like to ask again for git mainline to seriously
> > consider adopting this change, given the information presented above
> > and the ongoing movement against systemic racism.
>
> I am OK in principle if a future version of Git, when used by a new
> user of Git who does not have any custom configuration, wrote a
> string other than 'master' in .git/HEAD when "git init" is run.
>
> Picking a good replacement word to mean the primary branch is
> tricky, though. Just having a notion that one is special among
> many (i.e. the primary-ness of the thing being named with a word
> that will replace 'master') may already be offending to some folks.
I find this response not satisfactory:
- as far as I can tell, no evidence that "main" offends anyone.
- git trying to be neutral by not having any default name seems like a
weak response to this issue.
- having users have to pick a branch name when initiating a repo
increases the burden on users and makes the learning curve steeper for
beginners.
- git not being opinionated on the branch name doesn't address the
inconsistency problem pointed out in the original post.
- while git itself could avoid having a default branch name, platforms
that use git such as GitHub or GitLab will still likely want a
default.
I think git can lead the way and make things inclusive, consistent,
and not regress on usability.
cheers,
> Also notice that the qualified statement above talks only about the
> plain vanilla experience---the change of the default should be
> designed to avoid harming workflows in existing repositories and
> tools built around them.
>
> So, I think there are two separate tasks that can run in parallel.
>
> * Pick the new default word to replace 'master'; it may turn out
> that the Git project choose not to pick any to avoid offending
> anybody, in which case "git init" may force end users pick the
> default they want to use and offer recording in the ~/.gitconfig
> file.
>
> * Engineering work that uses the word that replaces 'master' by
> default (if one got chosen) when not configured, and use the word
> the end user chose when configured (iow, allow users to override
> the default word that will replace 'master'). This includes
> design work to decide what to do in existing repositories (if
> there is anything that needs to be done).
>
> Without digging deeply, I think we are pretty good about basing
> things on HEAD (e.g. "git branch -d" protects the branch by seeing
> if it is already merged to 'HEAD' or its @{upstream}, and not treats
> 'master' any specially), so it might be the matter of teaching "git
> init" (it uses 'master' by default) and "git clone" (it tries to use
> the name of the branch the HEAD at origin points at, but falls back
> to 'master' when the branch name their HEAD points at cannot be
> determined).
>
--
Simon Pieters
Bocoup https://bocoup.com/
--
Simon Pieters
https://bocoup.com/
