Proposal: Rename default branch to main

[colby-swandale]

Note: This proposal is mostly taken from rubygems/rubygems#5141 but I've made some slight edits for this particular repo

Abstract

I wish to propose renaming the default branch from master to main. The larger developer community has been moving away from non-inclusive terms such as master, slave, blacklist, and whitelist.

Other examples of open source projects renaming their default branch to main:

• Change the default branch name for new Rails projects from master to main rails/rails#40214
• Change default branch for new Rails projects and plugins to main rails/rails#40254
• https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/06/18/proposal-update-all-git-repositories-to-use-main-instead-of-master/

This change is relatively minimal thanks to Github natively supporting renaming the default branch to main and will do most of the work for us automatically, such as adding automatic redirects & updating existing Pull Requests to point to main. But this will require some manual steps.

You can find more information at: https://github.com/github/renaming.

Steps Required

As mentioned, Github automates most of the needed steps to switch the default branch to main, but some steps still need to be performed manually by maintainers before & after the rename.

Github Actions

Before renaming the default branch in Github, the Github Action Workflows will need to be amended to mirror the main and master branches. So that we can test pushing a commit to main, while developers continue to use master.

Update branch protection rules

We currently use branch protection to prevent merging Pull Requests that do not pass the status checks. This rule will need to be updated to use main after the default branch changes.

Local Migration

After the rename, developers will need to migrate their local development environment to main. This migration can be done by renaming the master branch to main and updating the remote to origin/main

$ git checkout master
$ git branch -m main
$ git branch -u origin/main

Remove/Rename references to master

Update Github actions to remove any branch filtering on the master branch and rename any references to master in the documentation & source code.

Update Shipit & Deploy scripts

We will need to update Shipit and any deploy scripts for staging/master to use main (we're applicable)

Renaming the default branch

The default branch can be renamed in Github, which is documented in doc.github.com

Questions

• Are any scripts/tooling affected by this proposed change?
• Are there any changes outside the repo that need to be made?

[rubyFeedback]

I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I think the explanation is weird, since it insinuates that the
words are "non-inclusive" by themselves. But this is a feeling ultimately and people are different. By
the same token you would have to ban every gem that has a "non-inclusive" name too and there
are quite some. For instance, the sinatra gem - that's mocking Frank Sinatra right? Or the puma gem,
it's not nice to be exclusive against other cat-types. We also have a gem with ~55 million downloads
called factory girl. Girls shouldn't be chained up in a factory right? There is also delivery_boy which
makes fun of boys delivering cheap stuff, and cluster_fuck gem, the fuck gem and ... well. The list
is quite long. All non-inclusive terms!!!

But anyway, I don't really have any big stake in it either way. People feel better when the master branch
is the main branch so ok. I just think the explanation is ... peculiar.

Actually 'main' has one awkward benefit over 'master' which is that it is shorter to type. :D

[deivid-rodriguez]

I'm clearly on the 👍 side of the inclusive naming debate. We should try make everyone feel welcome, if language can help with that, then let's do it (by the way, in my opinion the only good example about non inclusive gem names you gave is factory_girl, which got actually renamed for this reason).

But regardless of this debate, which I know it's usually long and controversial, isn't "main" a way better name than "master" for the default branch of a repository?

[simi]

I'm ok to stick with default branch as is in git. Currently it is master, but it is marked as subject to change in the future. I wasn't able to find out any plans (I think there are none actually).

It would be nice, if decision to change default branch is made, it would be done in way to not just hardcode new name everywhere. Btw. AFAIK it is still not simple to find out default branch via simple git commands :(

And me personally, I would rather spend time on fixing client facing problems during my time spend on RG. If anyone has time to handle this with all consequences (not just change default branch on GitHub), I don't see any problem moving to "main" for example.

[deivid-rodriguez]

Btw. AFAIK it is still not simple to find out default branch via simple git commands :(

Yeah. If I recall correctly, the way we added this detection in bundler was to run git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD on a freshly cloned repo.

[simi]

Yeah. If I recall correctly, the way we added this detection in bundler was to run git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD on a freshly cloned repo.

Could be, but I think it doesn't work for old clones. Anyway I'm not sure that's problem.

[flavorjones]

I've on occasion found it valuable to link people to https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-knodel-terminology-07.html to help communicate why a terminology change like this is beneficial.