Locking comments. Had a good run, over half a day, but this was always headed for an emotional train wreck.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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I always rename my branch to main. Because it's shorter? That's the extent of my reasoning. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
The default branch for some projects is "production" since CD deploys on pushing to that branch
For new projects, main. My thought is that even if master is not offensive, since the industry has generally made the change, the only reason to stick with master is stubbornness or hating political correctness, neither of which aligns with my self-view so I'll use main and move on.
In general if people are genuinely hurt by the use of some words, I'm not sadistic so I'll avoid using them. From my perspective morality is the pursuit of the reduction of suffering, even if that suffering is internal.
It kills me that this take is so hard to find online.
Did I think calling the main branch βmasterβ was offensive before this controversy? No, Iβd never even considered it.
Does switching to calling it βmainβ impact me, likeβ¦ at all? Also no. Itβs like the lowest effort change to make.
If I can make my industry more welcoming to a more diverse group of people, that is a solid victory and way more important than the name of my primary git branch.
I mean, the problem people have with it isn't a name change or improving inclusivity. It's the fact that they feel like they are being bullied into doing something they had no input into in the name of inclusivity. What pisses people off is how, as soon as someone says "x" isn't maximally inclusive of some marginalized group, everyone has to change or else get called a categorically bad person.
For example, suppose you have a red hat that you enjoy wearing. You got it at wafflefest a decade ago, and it says "I <3 Waffles". Then one day, your boss sends out an email that no more red hats are allowed in the office because it might create an unwelcoming environment. You will, of course, be pissed off. Not because you can't wear your waffle hat anymore, but because your boss feels entitled to control the minutiae of you life like this. You'll think to yourself "fuck that guy, and fuck whoever brought up banning red hats in some corporate board room 1000 miles away. This is bullshit!"
People like their autonomy, and don't like being controlled. Doesn't matter if it is in the name of increased corporate profits, or inclusivity, or saving the bees, or dying of lung cancer. They don't care about the name of their git branch - they care that they feel like they are being forced to change it.
That analogy doesn't really apply though. The decision to change master to main was a collective one, not made by "some corporate board room 1000 miles away". It may feel like that's how it went down because you only noticed when GitHub changed their defaults or whatever, but that decision was not made in a vacuum, it was the result of lots of people saying "hey, this is a problem, let's fix it" for a long time before any actions were taken.
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Donβt forget laziness. I have some projects that have been around forever and I am not changing it across my infra because I am lazy. I will do it next yearβ¦
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No one commits to trunk anymore....
I think you are onto something. Especially Mastodon devs are losing so much.
Just use main. I'm not bothered by either, but I'm not in the demographic that would be bothered by master, so I use main and STFU. It takes way less effort to switch to main (if you haven't already) than to come up with all this rhetoric about why master shouldn't trigger people.
I would argue that it's best/easiest to leave existing projects on master, and just use main for new ones. Either way I agree, people arw reactionary af about this issue
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Master. I find the whole "reasoning" behind the controversy absolute horseshit peddled by nontechnical people on the sidelines
Just that master doesn't actually makes much sense in most git workflows.
If you understand master like you would understand the master/slave relationship in old tech, then of course, master seems to make sense until you realize that there is no slave in that sense or in name. Additional, master is rarely doing anything but having release or hot fixes being merged into it. Arguably dev is the master of the branches.
In other words, master was always a bad name. It is silly to rename it because "racism" but it is at least equally silly to act like master is a much better name than "main" or "live" or "prod" or ... Fuck, the list is long.
The master branch is called master not because of slavery. It's a master copy of the code, like how in the record industry there are master records. It has nothing to do with slavery
Based. We need to make music industry use Main records and not Master records from now on!
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It's a retroactive bastardization of the word based on one particular culture's one particular interpretation of it (master being, apparently, a slaveowner) that ignores both the much earlier meanings of master artisan or master craftsman (as opposed to journeyman and apprentice) and masterpiece (through which an artisan is recognised as a master), and the modern meaning of a master copy (like a master record in disc printing).
This isn't like replacing the "master and slave" terminology with regard to connected devices. That one was warranted because it was often inaccurate and confusing. But forcing the adoption of main instead of master feels like someone got offended on someone else's behalf because a word looked superficially like that other bad word, and apparently we can't have an understanding that goes deeper than what letters it's made up of.
Amerika ist wunderbar. This is an --initial-branch=master household.
At some point needlessly banning words just empowers bigots by letting them claim larger and larger parts of the vocabulary. Shouldn't we try to reclaim words instead, and deprive the words of their power? Just "banning" words, especially in cases such as this one when the connection to master/slave is pretty weak, actually increases the negative power of the words and I'd argue empowers people with malicious intent
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I don't care which one you use, just don't change it once it's established. So many legacy Yocto projects got broken cause open source libraries changed their branch names.
I donβt care which one you use, just donβt change it once itβs established. So many legacy Yocto projects got broken cause open source libraries changed their branch names.
This was one of the arguments when the renaming was first proposed. "Just rename it, it won't break anything! It's only racists that want to keep the name!"
Sure, except for all the CI/CD scripts, release scripts, etc that all have "master" there and are now broken.
I know of a company that their entire CI pipeline was broken overnight because some "helpful" person renamed the branch to master but didn't bother checking out their pipelines...
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Main.
Don't get me wrong, the whole debate is Microsoft just being performative (why not use your vast wealth to actually help people?). But honestly, putting the debate aside, "main" is just a clearer and more intuitive name.
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I personally don't think the word "master" should be considered offensive - my wife has a master's degree in deaf education - but I've switched to "main" because that seems to be the convention now and it really doesn't have to be an issue.
There's no "slave" convention in git so I'm not sure how it can be considered an issue (I get that drives being master and slave is a bit icky). But then, what is it a master of?
As others have said, "trunk" would have been a more sensible replacement.
It's a master the same way that an original recording (the final version before mass reproduction) is called a master; mixing and processing the raw media clips into such a recording is called mastering. It's a convention that has existed long before computers were a thing.
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If it uses master and it's too much trouble to get people to switch. It stays master until we can coordinate.
If I'm starting a new project I use main.
Why?
It doesn't take much to do and it avoids any misunderstandings or arguments and we've got work to do. I don't particular care if you guys are "stuck" on master. If that's what it is and everyone wants to keep it that way, I don't have enough will to change it. If it's under my control, I will change it.
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Using master is stupid. Is your branch in charge of others? Is it more skilled than your other branches? Software engineering has too many crusty dorks that stick to their paradigms like it's their religion. Acting like it's their heritage to use outdated terms but also it doesn't matter so that's why they'll keep using it.
Calling an original, analogue recording a master does make sense, as all copies of it will by nature be of a lesser quality. This isn't the case for git branches tho.
I don't think the word "master" is indicating quality though, just that it's the "source" or "basis"
The name have nothing to do with being in charge of others, skill level, or anything, but, sure.
Personally I've come to hate main because it breaks habits easily. I'm working 75% of the time on master repos, but then I might need to do a quick edit on a main repo and suddenly my git checkout master doesn't work.
Or even copy pasting scripts from one project to another can easily break if you forget to change the branch
The reason behind the change is pretty stupid anyway (I'm against slavery but it shouldn't be treated like a slur still)
both. but majority are master cause that's the default and I'm too lazy to change nor do I really care.
I get wanting to move away from "master," but why in the world didn't we use "trunk"
It was already a standard name, and it fits "branches," etc.
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main in the streets, master in the sheets
I use master in all my projects
I save my code as .txt files on my hard drive.
They follow the naming convention "project1", "project1a", "project1a1" and so on in consecutive logical order
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The real answer is whichever is easiest. If you've got a master branch and it's a pain to switch, then I wouldn't do it. If you've got a badass coder who is disturbed by the terminology, then I'd say to do it to keep the peace. It depends on the situation.
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