[Mesa-dev] Rename "master" branch to "main"?

[Jason Ekstrand]

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 12:51 PM Erik Faye-Lund
<erik.faye-lund at collabora.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2020-08-03 at 12:48 -0500, Jason Ekstrand wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 12:42 PM Erik Faye-Lund
> > <erik.faye-lund at collabora.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2020-08-03 at 10:30 -0500, Jason Ekstrand wrote:
> > > > All,
> > > >
> > > > I'm sure by now you've all seen the articles, LKML mails, and
> > > > other
> > > > chatter around inclusive language in software.  While mesa
> > > > doesn't
> > > > provide a whole lot of documentation (hah!), we do have a
> > > > website, a
> > > > code-base, and a git repo and this is something that we, as a
> > > > project
> > > > should consider.
> > > >
> > > > What I'm proposing today is simply re-naming the primary Git
> > > > branch
> > > > from "master" to "main".  Why "main"?  Because that's what GitHub
> > > > has
> > > > chosen "main" as their new default branch name and so it sounds
> > > > to me
> > > > like the most likely new default.
> > > >
> > > > As far as impact on the project goes, if and when we rename the
> > > > primary branch, the old "master" branch will be locked (no
> > > > pushing/merging allowed) and all MRs will have to be re-targeted
> > > > against the new branch.  Fortunately, that's very easy to
> > > > do.  You
> > > > just edit the MR and there's a little drop-down box at the top
> > > > for
> > > > which branch it targets.  I just tested this with one of mine and
> > > > it
> > > > seems to work ok.
> > > >
> > > > As far as other bits of language in the code-base, I'm happy to
> > > > see
> > > > those cleaned up as people have opportunity.  I'm not aware of
> > > > any
> > > > particularly egregious offenders.  However, changing the name of
> > > > the
> > > > primary branch is something which will cause a brief hiccup in
> > > > people's development process and so warrants broader discussion.
> > > >
> > > > Thoughts?
> > > >
> > >
> > > I'm all for renaming it, but I'm a bit worried about doing it in a
> > > way
> > > where we don't break all merge-requests...
> > >
> > > As far as I know, GitLab doesn't allow changing the target-branch
> > > of a
> > > merge-request, so all pending merge-requests would all of a sudden
> > > point to the wrong branch.
> >
> > No and yes.  It doesn't have any way to mass-edit merge requests to
> > re-target them.  (It does have a mass-edit tool but it doesn't
> > support
> > that).  However, it does support re-targetting individual merge
> > requests.  I even gave instructions for doing so in my first e-mail.
> > :-)
> >
>
> Thanks for pointing that out, I feel kinda stupid now. I was looking
> for that feature in the past, and couldn't find it, but surely there it
> is!

No worries.  I was 100% sure it wasn't there too until I looked for it
today.  Maybe it was added recently?

> I guess I should have read more carefully. Updating every merge request
> manually should be a totally OK compromise IMO.

Cool.

--Jason