On Fri, Nov 13, 2020 at 4:05 PM Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@xxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, 13 Nov 2020, Jeff King wrote: > > I'm on the fence whether there should be a deprecation period or major > > version bump for the final patch, but making the tests flexible enough > > to handle the before and after state seems like it can be done uncoupled > > from the actual default-flip. > > Hmm. On that matter, I wonder what the big fuss is all about. It's not > like Git is forcing anybody to change their default branch. Except you are, and you will be doing it without the user consent, and without warning. This is the opposite of what any software project that cares about its users should do. The consequences are predictable. Exactly the same argument was used in 2008, and it was wrong for exactly the same reasons. Yes, people could add the exec-path to their PATH, so "nobody was being forced" ultimately, but that's missing the point entirely, because that happened *after* they were forced initially, and being caught completely off guard. > There have been plenty of articles about this in the meantime, too, and > I could imagine that most developers are at least aware that the shift > away from `master` is happening, in many quite visible projects. I have used Git since 2005, contributed since 2009, follow the git subreddit, and I was not aware of the change, and presumably neither was Ævar. What you imagine most developers know is irrelevant, what is relevant is what they actually know. This is the bias known as the curse of knowledge: since you have a lot of specific knowledge you fail to see how other people could not see the same thing you are seeing, but they don't, and the reason is that they don't have the same knowledge as you. But just because you can't see it happen, doesn't mean it can't. It did in 2008, and people back then used the same argument you are using now. Developers back then could not imagine how it was possible that users were not aware of the upcoming change that had been cooking for years, but alas they did not. Do not assume what your users know. Deprecation periods exist for a reason, and so do warnings. -- Felipe Contreras
