Rename "master" branch to "main"?

[Carlos O'Donell]

On 6/30/20 2:10 PM, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> Community,
> 
> As we approach the release boundary for 2.32 we come to a natural point
> where we can rename our development and release branch.
> 
> Red Hat CTO Chris Wright wrote about this recently:
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/making-open-source-more-inclusive-eradicating-problematic-language
> 
> LWN also wrote about this recently in "Loaded terms in free software":
> https://lwn.net/Articles/823224/
> 
> Github is committed to changing the default development branch to "main":
> https://twitter.com/natfriedman/status/1271253144442253312
> 
> There are open requests for Gitlab to adopt "main" as the default branch name:
> https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/220906
> https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/222204
> 
> My proposal would be to rename the development and current release branch:
> 
> * master -> main
> 
> * release/2.32/master -> release/2.32/main
> 
> This proposal is only about the development branch and upcoming release
> branch. Please start a new thread to discuss the historical branch names
> or other relevant issues.
> 
> My concern is that git, as a project, has not yet changed their default,
> and it would be beneficial to match their default name. I am OK with
> waiting for the git project to make a choice before changing our branch
> name to match.

The Linux kernel has adopted the following guidance:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=49decddd39e5f6132ccd7d9fdc3d7c470b0061bb

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.