Subject: Re: Rename offensive terminology (master)

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 13:17:09 -0700

Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> demerphq <[email-masked]> writes:

>>> kind of confusion. Consider how this conversation goes for us:
>>>
>>> A: "No you need to fetch trunk from the remote, then you need to merge
>>> it to your local trunk and then push it to the master trunk".
>>> B: "Ok."
>>
>> Hmph, why isn't the last one "trunk trunk"?
[...]
>> What I am trying to get at is, after changing the name that is given
>> by default to the primary branch in a newly created repositories by
>> "git init" to 'main' (which I am OK with, and it seems that the
>> major projects and repository hosting services will be doing anyway
>> with or without getting themselves in this discussion on this list),
>> wouldn't we risk the same "master master" confusion caused by and to
>> those newer users who learn 'main' is the word given to the primary
>> thing?
>
> I think Yves's point is that when the tool you are building has a
> component named $FOO, it's confusing to also have a branch named $FOO.
[...]
> In particular when building distributed systems, historically it has
> been common to have one of the components being built be named
> 'master'.

Of course I missed the other point --- hostnames like master.<domain>
(e.g., a hypothetical master.kernel.org), refering to the source of
truth for something that then gets replicated.

I don't think we're likely to see hostnames like main.kernel.org
because it's just *so generic* as a word.

Jonathan