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

Eric Engestrom eric at engestrom.ch
Mon Aug 3 18:38:05 UTC 2020


On Monday, 2020-08-03 13:31:19 -0500, Jason Ekstrand wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 1:24 PM Eric Engestrom <eric at engestrom.ch> wrote:
> >
> > On Monday, 2020-08-03 10:30:29 -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?
> >
> > Definite +1 for me on the idea, but we do have a lot of tools and
> > processes with `master` baked in. I'll try and have a look at everything
> > to make sure everything supports the transition (some things will need
> > to support both the old and new names), but assuming no issue there this
> > would be a really good thing to do, and `main` is a good name.
> 
> I did some grepping and I noticed that as well.  Some of the tools
> such as the khronos sync scripts will have to change if/when Khronos
> repos make a similar transition.  I expect that to happen but don't
> have a timeline.  I'll try to keep you posted on those.

The external things like Khronos should be easy enough to handle, I was
more concerned about internal things like the stable branches.

> 
> For the internal ones, if you wanted to make a MR for it, we can
> either land it with support for both ahead of the switch or we can
> make it the first commit that goes on the new "main" branch.  In any
> case, I'm not in so much of a hurry that I think we need to make the
> switch ahead of getting tooling ready.

No hurry either... except a branchpoint like the one happening in 2
days is the perfect time to minimize issues, as we could have eg.
`master` for VERSION<20.2 and `main` for VERSION>=20.2 which would
make it trivial for tools to know which branch name to use based on
the VERSION file.


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