[HN Gopher] Gitlab default branch name changes to main
___________________________________________________________________
Gitlab default branch name changes to main
Author : ProZsolt
Score : 78 points
Date : 2021-03-14 12:02 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (about.gitlab.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (about.gitlab.com)
| EdwinLarkin wrote:
| This is american cultural imperialism. Plaina and simple. I am
| planning to migrate to Russian or Chinese hosted git
| alternatives.
| splix wrote:
| That's actually an interesting cultural and language
| difference. Being Russian, I never thought about the offense
| meaning of the word "master" in English, at least in this
| context.
|
| The reason is that in Russia word "master" ("master") means
| something like "an expert in his field", usually referred to
| professionals. It seems that it has the same Latin root but
| evolved into a different meaning. So the Russian meaning is
| more close to the Italian "Maestro".
|
| And for me, that meaning was a good fit for the "master"
| branch, like it contains something professionally made or
| finished, and just learned that Americans put different meaning
| when they were deciding on the branch's name.
| afiori wrote:
| Another usage of "maestro" in Italian is in "muro maestro"
| meaning the "load-bearing wall", which is quite apt for git.
| splix wrote:
| yeah, similar, there are different words and phrases
| produced from "master" in Russia, and all of them means
| something related to professional or good work. Like
| "master-skaya" is "work room", and so on. So I was always
| thinking in this context referring the git branches.
| anthk wrote:
| In Spanish too.
| gandalfgreybeer wrote:
| I am not American so maybe the impact of why it needs to be
| changed is lost on me. But given the context it's either a zero
| or a positive net effect.
|
| I, however, can't imagine switching away from a service that I
| use to something else based solely on this issue.
|
| If it's not for you but it (tries) to helps others and doesn't
| really take anything away from you then it's a net positive
| change.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| gear54rus wrote:
| Another victim of this hysteria.
|
| Will surely make a point to switch it back every time I create a
| repo.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Downvoted because sneering dismissal serves no purpose except
| to make discourse more toxic.
| meepmorp wrote:
| You sound more hysterical than they do. How badly does this
| affect you and your life, really?
| rualca wrote:
| > You sound more hysterical than they do. How badly does this
| affect you and your life, really?
|
| So much this.
|
| Naming things is an arbitrary process, and adopting a default
| naming suggestion to accommodate someone's sensibilities is
| something that does not have any negative impact on anyone.
| At all.
|
| To those who are whining about a default naming suggestion:
| grow up.
| [deleted]
| tialaramex wrote:
| See, that would be making yourself a victim of "hysteria". If
| you just raised an eyebrow and moved on then your claim that
| it's "hysteria" might have more weight but you'd have less
| opportunity to grandstand about it. This is also an amusing
| choice of terminology because of the origin of the word
| hysteria but I'm going to guess you didn't do that on purpose.
| hYKdTfpa wrote:
| Do we really have to examine the origin of every word we use
| rather than according its modern common usage and use in
| context?
| truculent wrote:
| We're not examining every word. This article is about
| examining a specific word, with a specific history, within
| a specific context.
| vshager wrote:
| In a specific country, whose industry takes free open
| source labor from all over the world and then imposes its
| own cultural values.
|
| Open source people from other regions provide the
| majority of code and have no say in political decisions.
| One might be tempted to say that they are slaves.
| truculent wrote:
| > imposes its own cultural values.
|
| This is a default. If it offends your sensibilities so
| much, you can configure it to be something else.
|
| Heck, I'd even go as far as suggesting that "main" is a
| more common word for non-native speakers of english than
| "master", making it more intuitive for non-US developers.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't use HN for political and ideological
| flamewar, regardless of what you're battling for or
| against. We're trying for something else here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| meepmorp wrote:
| Why are you so invested in something with so very little
| impact on you?
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| That's how society keeps going downhill. Just raise an
| eyebrow and keep moving whenever X is introduced, soon enough
| we'll be paying the price.
| sinistro25 wrote:
| I fell too that this master-slave thing is a overstretch and a
| little hysteria. That being said, I do think 'main' is a better
| name for what this branch is supposed to be and it might be
| better for beginners to understand. Of course, 'master' is the
| term we are all used to and that will cause a lot of confusion
| and broken pipelines too.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| Is it really necessary to change it every time? Github did the
| same thing last year, I just went into my organisations
| settings and switched the default back to master.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Whether it's called "master" or "main" affects me very little.
|
| Whether it's called "master" or "main" affects some people very
| much.
|
| I'm enough of a team player that I'm willing to make the switch
| to make others more comfortable.
| hYKdTfpa wrote:
| No, it doesn't affect anyone. It's a perfectly legitimate use
| of the word.
| [deleted]
| vshager wrote:
| Do you think they'll stop there? Revolutions are perpetual
| and once you have fed the beast, it comes back for more.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. This sort
| of provocation is close to trolling. It seriously damages the
| thread, especially when the topic is provocative. Please don't
| do it again.
|
| There are plenty of ways to make substantive comments on both
| sides of this question, as other users have demonstrated.
| Please either do that instead, or (always a fine option) don't
| post.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| alacombe wrote:
| This all thread is a huge flamewar...
| dang wrote:
| It's a matter of degree. If you don't consider that, it
| leads to a nihilistic "why bother" attitude that actually
| makes things considerably worse. Let's inch our way toward
| something better instead.
| pezezin wrote:
| I did that recently. I had been developing some code for a few
| months, committing to a local repo, and I finally decided to
| upload it to GitHub. The local branch was named "master"
| because that is Git's default, but GitHub decided it should be
| "main", so the first thing I did after creating the repo was to
| revert it to "master".
|
| Fuck virtue signalling and Twitter keyboard warriors. My
| parents grew up under an oppressive ultra-catholic dictatorship
| where they had to pretend to be "good" Christians, and I for
| sure don't want society to go the same way again.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Adoption of more inclusive terms is hardly "hysteria".
|
| This IETF memo^1 makes a rational, compelling case for adopting
| alternate terms.
|
| I encourage you to read it, and try taking a broader, more
| empathetic view. Pause to consider the weight and connotations
| of certain words for certain groups of people, before claiming
| victimhood or accusing others of hysteria.
|
| Characterizing the change as "PC Politburo" word-policing
| strikes me as a shallow, knee-jerk response to a positive
| change. Fewer characters, less baggage, clearer semantics.
| What's the harm?
|
| 1. https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-knodel-terminology-04.html
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Part of taking a broad and empathetic approach is
| understanding all people's emotions, thoughts and desires
| without necessarily sympathetiszing with them. Empathy is a
| pre requisite for agreement, discussion and conflict
| resolution.
|
| What these types of changes show, however is that there is no
| discussion and the opposition to such change indicates a
| "lack of empathy" which is a classic othering tactic. That to
| me is worrying. People should be able to meet in the middle,
| to negotiate change.
|
| These types of change appear to have been done with no real
| agreement, no meeting in the middle. It appears as if,
| ironically (and with a bit of exaggeration from me), no
| empathy outside of the ingroup was used.
|
| The reality is no holistic understanding or discussion is
| required as it's a foregone decision and one where almost
| everyone in this discussion forum has no say about. We should
| just get on and live with it.
| rvz wrote:
| Right I should have known that it is Sunday slow news day.
| alacombe wrote:
| SV SJW white-knights are getting bored since they got orange
| man out.
| Longhanks wrote:
| I wonder if a master's degree is also offensive.
| A12-B wrote:
| Master has multiple definitions, yours is not the same as the
| one git used.
| Longhanks wrote:
| Exactly, and gits is not the same one as a slave master.
| beojan wrote:
| Turns out it is:
|
| > This term came from Bitkeeper, a predecessor to Git.
| Bitkeeper referred to the source of truth as the "master
| repository" and other copies as "slave repositories".
| alacombe wrote:
| Just the same as a Master's degree.
|
| edit: to the downvoters:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%27s_degree
|
| _A master 's degree[note 1] (from Latin magister) is an
| academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon
| completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or
| a high-order overview of a specific field of study or
| area of professional practice._
|
| The holders of a Master's degree are expected to be the
| "source of truth", as much as git's _master_ branch is
| the "source of truth".
| rjknight wrote:
| In all of the previous discussions of this topic, I have
| never seen this simple fact pointed out. To me, this is a
| definitive argument for changing the name. If the facts
| had been different, I might have seen the matter
| differently, but if these are the facts then the name
| change makes sense.
| temporama1 wrote:
| Bitkeeper must be punished for these transgressions.
| Longhanks wrote:
| Turns out the meaning can change over time. I'm confident
| the number of people using a master branch and the people
| owning slaves and thus being slave masters is zero.
|
| Otherwise, one would probably soon need a list of banned
| words that may have been used in the past in
| "controversial" context so to not offend anyone. But I'm
| not sure how much of human language will remain at this
| point.
| abiogenesis wrote:
| I'm not sure about the accuracy of this quote. In git
| world branch names have nothing to do with repositories.
| If anything, the "source of truth" repository is
| generally called "origin".
| p49k wrote:
| Except that it is, as explained in the actual article.
| henryaj wrote:
| If we're referring to 'master' in the context of
| master/slave, then that's also not the same as the one git
| uses
| detaro wrote:
| According to the article it does.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Lol, are we mains graduate now ?
| rvz wrote:
| Master agumonkey, (oops) how would you like to pay your
| student loans for that Masters degree? (oops.)
|
| Would you like to pay by Mastercard? (oops.)
| agumonkey wrote:
| Apparently the HN crowd disagreed on your facetious mastery
| :)
| rvz wrote:
| I'm still waiting for Mastercard to change their grossly
| offensive name. /s
|
| This is how they will say 'PaYMEnTs aRe raCiST'.
| geodel wrote:
| Great point to bring up. They can play the main card and call
| it EqualCard(r) . Sounds much better isn't it?
| lima wrote:
| Good question - the appears to be "no", since it has a clear
| origin and meaning unrelated to master/slave relationships.
| geodel wrote:
| Agreed. Git has a very painful history of keeping master code
| where slave code in branches did all the work.
| eli wrote:
| Did you read the linked post which explains the history of
| the term in git?
| this_was_posted wrote:
| by that logic, would the linux command "kill" also be
| offensive enough to the relatives of murder victims that it
| warrants a rename?
| furgooswft13 wrote:
| Give em a few months.
| rvnx wrote:
| Shouldn't the real name of this software be "signal"
| anyway ?
| geodel wrote:
| Yes, conscientious people already call main
| degree/bedroom/bathrooms etc.
| vmilner wrote:
| Confusing if they have two masters degrees...
| geodel wrote:
| Well some main are more main than others one can always add
| footnote to clarify in resume.
| pdxandi wrote:
| Would it be a big deal to change it? I don't mind calling my
| degree something else.
| Zealotux wrote:
| Did they sign a contract with ICE
| truculent wrote:
| That was GitHub
| cmckn wrote:
| I think the default branch name change has been good for the
| ecosystem; "master" didn't always make sense for whatever
| workflow was used, and it was hardcoded all over a bunch of
| tooling. I think "main" makes more sense, regardless of politics,
| and this encouraged a lot of software to make the default branch
| configurable.
| randomsearch wrote:
| I'm worried about wokeness but I switched to "main" because I
| took the cue from Linus and because I figured the cost was
| (almost) zero and if it marginally improved the happiness of a
| potential future employee it was easier to do now.
|
| In hindsight I agree, it feels like a better choice anyway -
| quicker to type and it makes sense. Win win.
|
| That said my concern is that the "cost was zero" - one of the
| biggest problems with wokeness is it serves to distract from
| productive actions rather than sanctimony / tokenism / virtue
| signalling. Perhaps a symptom of twitter syndrome: virtual
| likes (easy, simple, shallow) vs real change (hard, messy,
| compromising).
|
| When I start discussing the latest woke language debate, I
| remember that this pontification is exactly my objection, and
| that I'd be better off thinking about how I can help people who
| are poor or homeless or unable to access good schooling, rather
| than endlessly debating which words to use. There certainly is
| an opportunity cost, mostly on the political left as it
| neglects vital issues such as financial inequality, education,
| health, and deteriorating infrastructure.
|
| Perhaps the best thing I could start with is to quit twitter to
| rid myself of the distraction? I don't know. Anyone managed to
| work out how to navigate this?
| oap_bram wrote:
| You just have to be realistic and contextual with the
| conversations you're entering in.
|
| In the above comments, I might as well very much seem like a
| virtue signaling SJW that would rather have a small language
| win than a hard-problem-solved kinda win.
|
| However, outside of these few comments, I'm active in leftist
| political organizations and I've organized strikes, campaigns
| and more to best the actual lively hood of a lot of lower
| class (and therefor usually radically diverse) people.
|
| Just keep in mind that this _is_ about language in this
| context. But for me as someone that tries to make every part
| of my live better for me people, this is also part of that,
| how small and ridiculous it might seem in it's effect.
| afavour wrote:
| Agreed. I was interested to read in the article that the master
| name does indeed originate from master/slave, because that
| doesn't map to my mental model of git branching at all.
|
| If "main" is a better description _and_ offends fewer people,
| why not switch? Just seems like opposing a very minor change
| for the sake of it.
| rvnx wrote:
| This will necessarily cause some people to hijack the
| reference branch by creating one branch called "master" and
| this branch may be used upstream (e.g. Debian builds) to
| create packages without approval from the main maintainer
| (who is committing in "main").
| afavour wrote:
| If there are any tools hardcoded to use master then there's
| nothing stopping anyone continuing to call their reference
| branch "master". These changes don't even apply to existing
| repos, just as a default for new ones.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > it was hardcoded all over a bunch of tooling
|
| But that was fine because everyone used it. I agree "main"
| would have made more sense from the start, but changing it now
| is just a waste of effort and makes things more difficult (e.g.
| before you could have hard-coded "master" but now you have to
| figure out if it is "master" or "main").
| swiley wrote:
| The workflow I use on my personal repo (for stuff I can't/won't
| publish) doesn't even use a default branch, just feature
| branches and branches named after hostnames.
| woudsma wrote:
| That saves two bytes.
| tux3 wrote:
| It does, but somehow I get the idea that your comment doesn't
| really capture the crux of this debate :)
| hYKdTfpa wrote:
| This is the best argument for this change.
| oap_bram wrote:
| I for one think it's great that people are willing to make things
| a little more accessible for more people. If people want to be
| part of our community of developers I think it's great that these
| organizations listen to people who might have a problem with
| certain terminology. Even though I don't have a problem with
| those terms, I think it's still worth evaluating if they're worth
| keeping if it makes it harder for someone to be part of our
| community.
|
| Hope more of you feel the same, as I'm getting kind of tired of
| the "the SJWs are at it again" shtick. There's also legitimate
| reasons to why these changes are necessary outside of some loud
| obnoxious screams from certain SJW-like people, that yes, are
| annoying to hear. Some of the response from our community to
| "push back against this" is just equally weird, tone deaf and
| childish however.
|
| Say what you want, be we all know we've done silly refactors over
| smaller things. So don't make this bigger than it should be: it's
| about making our community bigger by making it easier for people
| to be part of it!
| africanboy wrote:
| As an Italian, let's talk about spaghetti code then :)
| swiley wrote:
| I think it's important to be inclusive. I'm not against this
| but there are definitely situations where this has gone too
| far. I've started to notice some companies completely excluding
| white men from PR images and not sending them to events which
| is super weird and definitely not inclusive.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >There's also legitimate reasons to why these changes are
| necessary outside of some loud obnoxious screams from certain
| SJW-like people, that yes, are annoying to hear. Some of the
| response from our community to "push back against this" is just
| equally weird, tone deaf and childish however.
|
| I understand your perspective. I'm not against changing the
| term. We changed it in our product a few years ago (master-
| slave to primary-secondary) as well ... primarily because even
| if you offend one (current or potential) customer it's just not
| a hill worth dying on.
|
| But to address your point though, I wish there was some
| acknowledgment by 'the SJWs' (as you put it) that even if the
| term is archaic and should change, the tech community simply
| used a descriptive dictionary term for a particular
| architecture, and therefore the term is wholly unconnected to
| 'white supremacy' or 'systemic racism' or 'unconscious bias'.
| But for many who raise these issues, there is no good-will or
| charity. And that's why there is pushback. Many people don't
| want to accept the position that they were purposely insulting
| other people when these terms were in widespread use.
| hYKdTfpa wrote:
| >I for one think it's great that people are willing to make
| things a little more accessible for more people.
|
| How does this make anything more accessible for anyone?
| eli wrote:
| It evokes slavery and makes some people feel unwelcome. Many
| other projects have made similar changes to their own repos
| (eg Go made the same switch) and there has been quite a lot
| written on the topic if you google around.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Considering you created an account just to post in this
| thread, and your comments imply a very clear bias, it's
| rather obvious you're not asking this question in good faith.
| temporama1 wrote:
| He's probably created an anonymous account because we live
| in a world where you may well lose your job for even
| questioning that a _source control branch name_ might
| offend someone.
|
| An opinion that - in the real world - the vast majority
| agree with.
| rualca wrote:
| Trying to portray the use of terms like master-slave as
| something that "might offend someone" is a complete
| misrepresentation of the issue, and one that is spawned
| from bad faith.
|
| The overall goal is inclusiveness. The goal is not
| centered around whether an expression offends, but
| whether an arbitrary naming choice does not help
| accommodate other people or if it might bring discussions
| and debates over personal matters some people feel
| strongly about.
|
| A few decades back, there was a common rule of thumb that
| was quite simple: do not discuss politics or religion in
| the workplace. The reasoning is straight-forward and
| simple to understand: if you wish to work somewhere where
| coworkers do not antagonize other coworkers for stupid
| personal reasons then you simply didn't opened the door
| to discussions about stupid personal matters.
| oap_bram wrote:
| There are plenty of people in our society that actually have
| a negative relationship to these terms that we commonly use
| in our profession. Psychologically, it can be harder to be
| part of a group of people or a profession when you have to
| use these terms, therefor lowering accessibility. This can be
| because of stigma enforcing terminology (such is the case of
| master/slave for some people).
|
| These are usually not effects experienced by the majority
| that's fine with those terms however, which makes it hard to
| empathize with people that do struggle. Unfortunately, people
| seem to think that rationality without empathy is always the
| road to a good conclusion. When you do it in these contexts,
| however, you're actively excluding those who you fail to
| empathize with.
| cobraetor wrote:
| Please stop speaking up on behalf of African Americans
| without consulting their own opinion on this matter.
|
| I'm one and not even my Black friends care about this silly
| posturing from White progressives. We are frankly getting
| tired of this virtue signalling while the American society
| doesn't give a shit about actual Black problems.
|
| What is "rationality without empathy"? Have you tried
| getting off that armchair and tried talking to poor Black
| people to understand how they feel?
| oap_bram wrote:
| Yes I have. Very weird for you to assume I don't. I don't
| live in America, however I am constantly reminded of my
| country's (The Netherlands) colonial past (you know, the
| spice trading, genocide inducing, slave trading one) and
| the repercussions of that. My city's suburban
| neighborhoods are filled with people of lower class of
| all different types of ethnicities. I've done as much as
| I could in the last few years to emancipate them, and as
| such I have ran into these "language problems" before,
| even in Dutch, even in different places than tech.
|
| To act as if our community does not have those issues, or
| to think that I do not have anything meaningful to say
| because I'm in an "armchair" doesn't make sense. I'm not
| American, I'm not speaking on behalf of African
| Americans, I'm speaking on behalf of myself and my own
| experience.
|
| I don't necessarily think this will persuade you to think
| differently however, so yeah. Keep your opinion, but
| don't assume my circumstance based on your subjective
| experience.
| temporama1 wrote:
| The number of people that _genuinely_ have a problem with the
| word "master" (excluding all the weird (white) twitter people)
| is close to zero.
| salmo wrote:
| In most places this is true. But working in Plantation heavy
| part of the South, it's awkward.
|
| Read it in a Southern white male accent to someone whose
| grandparents were sharecroppers in the Delta. We lose a lot
| of black talent to other industries, non technical roles in
| IT, and other locations despite good pay/cost of living.
|
| My black friend from high school on my team who is not overly
| sensitive and I have open conversations on race with has says
| it occasionally makes him cringe. I try to maintain an
| environment that's sensitive to people's real feelings,
| because I want them all to enjoy work. Not PC BS, but
| thinking about who needs to be asked to speak up, who needs
| more quiet time, etc.
|
| Probably hearing it in a different accent would make it more
| divorced from the past.
|
| This alone obviously won't fix anything. But it's one less
| thing to make people feel uncomfortable, and it doesn't cost
| anything except a naming convention.
|
| People talk about diversity as if it's just helping
| minorities. But working with low and high functioning teams
| over the years, my experience is that a happy diverse team is
| productive and creates a better product. I think including
| more perspectives in a job that is creative creates better
| results earlier in the process.
| devchix wrote:
| > My black friend from high school on my team who is not
| overly sensitive and I have open conversations on race with
| has says it occasionally makes him cringe
|
| I'm sorry to hear your friend won't be obtaining a degree
| just beyond a Bachelor's, or audition for the role of Bruce
| Wayne's butler, or pass beyond journeyman status in any
| trade. Does he not value recognized excellence? I presume
| he's not an heir presumptive of a Scottish peerage, nor
| does he aspire for a senior post in the Queen's household.
| Does he have any interest in the recording industry, I hear
| they do great things with old LPs these days to make them
| sound better. Perhaps he is musically inclined, there is a
| leader of the band job if he is. He could enlist in the
| navy, if he's not looking to get beyond an E-9. Regardless,
| I applaud gitlab for affording your friend the last venue
| of employment when the world and its derisive callousness
| collectively turns him away from his avocation. From
| development he may switch over to network and/or security,
| but better wait a few years. Those scoundrels still
| maintain a list of things that are denied, and things that
| are allowed, and your friend is probably not ready to know
| about them yet. To your friend!
|
| By the way, does he have any possession? Any at all? He may
| be in for a surprise to discover how he himself is
| addressed. Break it to him gently, won't you?
| DarkByte8 wrote:
| So what did your friend say? "I don't want to work here
| anymore because I keep hearing "push my change on master
| branch" and that is uncomfortable to me"? And how do you
| know that this is making IT lose talent?
| temporama1 wrote:
| "MY team"? I hope you aren't implying some form of
| ownership over your black friend? You'll be refering to
| yourself as "his boss" next.
|
| Please check your privilege.
| growse wrote:
| How many people have a problem with the word 'main'?
| temporama1 wrote:
| Nobody had a problem with "master" 18 months ago. Including
| you.
| [deleted]
| kyrieeschaton wrote:
| Anyone who believes that "master" is some kind of slur and
| takes the opportunity to take offense over it is not someone
| you want causing problems in your organization.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| I cannot wait until the woke find out what 'robot' means in
| Hungarian.
| [deleted]
| eli wrote:
| I feel that way about people who lack empathy
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| Where is this imaginary line between "ok to be offended" and
| "not ok to be offended"? Who decides where that line is?
|
| If you can trivially avoid even the risk of offending someone
| -- especially in a professional context -- then why wouldn't
| you?
| swat535 wrote:
| How is making a change that impacts people globally (which
| includes non English speakers) to mildly please a tiny
| portion of loud people trivial?
| stnmtn wrote:
| How big of a change is this for you? I mean seriously?
| oap_bram wrote:
| I dont know, I was taught from a very young age to be nice.
| And honestly, I kinda of kept it as a close part of my
| personality to not make anyone feel uncomfortable for any
| reason. Although I can argue most of these things from a
| political angle, I also feel like "making people feel more
| welcome" is a goal in and of itself, and therefor can't be
| overlooked.
|
| Honestly, I feel like if you would have a problem with a
| particular community you would like to have it resolved too
| right? I just don't think that it's ever been about
| terminology because you never had to feel uncomfortable
| because of it. That's not bad however, but it's easy to
| forget that if you don't relate to someone subjective
| reality, doesn't mean it's any less real.
| egwor wrote:
| Totally agree with this.
|
| If someone still struggles to get behind it, think of the
| few chars that will be shorter to type and also think how
| it is much easier to compare the branch concept a real
| tree, and talk about the main branch. Maybe they could have
| gone for trunk? (If you care so much about main vs trunk,
| then choose whatever makes you happy)
| rvnx wrote:
| It's very smart. Trunk is a better term than "main" and
| reflects very well the logic with the tree and historical
| naming (including CVS, SVN, and the trunk software
| itself).
|
| main implies that one branch is more important than the
| others. This could be offending to some.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >main implies that one branch is more important than the
| others. This could be offending to some.
|
| I can't tell if this is satire or not.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > main implies that one branch is more important than the
| others. This could be offending to some.
|
| What if one branch is actually more important than
| others? What about weighted graphs? Stochastic dominance?
| You can't blindly project social concepts on
| math/computing science, it's a blind alley.
| afavour wrote:
| "I am personally not offended by this, therefore anyone that
| _is_ offended is a problem to be removed"
|
| People have different life experiences and backgrounds. The
| cost to you of renaming is near zero, if you're the one
| loudly opposing something that makes your coworkers more
| comfortable then you're the one causing problems in the
| organisation.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I have yet to hear of _anyone_ being actually offended by
| this.
|
| > The cost to you of renaming is near zero
|
| Not true. I just had to update a load of tests for a git
| client I'm working on that assume the default branch name
| is `master` (I wrote them before this mess), and now I have
| to configure Git on every system I use to use a default
| name of master. It's not a huge pain, sure, but it isn't
| nothing and I don't get any benefit from it either.
| afavour wrote:
| Sounds like a flaw in your git client. It was always
| possible to change the default branch name, so hardcoding
| master was never right. You're far from alone in making
| that assumption though! The good news is this makes
| everyone's git tools more resilient.
|
| > It's not a huge pain, sure, but it isn't nothing and I
| don't get any benefit from it either
|
| The entire notion here is accommodating people. It
| doesn't benefit you personally but it does benefit
| others. And it's not a huge pain. At a certain point
| we're expending more energy debating doing this than if
| everyone just did it and moved on with their lives.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > Sounds like a flaw in your git client
|
| It wasn't in the client, it was in the tests. You know
| like, here's a script that makes a test repo:
| git init git add foo.txt git commit -m "A"
| git switch -c develop git add bar.txt git
| commit -m "B" git merge master # This will break
| soon.
|
| > The entire notion here is accommodating people.
|
| Is it though? It seems to me like the notion is
| _appearing_ to accommodate people. I still haven 't seen
| a single person say "my great grandfather was a slave and
| this offends me", only people saying "this might offend
| someone".
| [deleted]
| afavour wrote:
| If you strip away all the political outrage what's
| actually happening on a technical level is that git is
| adding a new feature: customisable default branches. I
| imagine they will provide an option to use it ("git
| checkout ---default" or whatever) and yes, you'll have to
| update your tests to accommodate it. I've lost count of
| the number of times I've had to tweak code because of an
| external API change that doesn't benefit me personally.
| Often it involves using an entire new API because the old
| one is being retired! Compared to that this is a walk in
| the park. A couple of hours at most. And yet everyone is
| expending hours upon hours arguing about it.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Right but people are arguing about it because it is
| unnecessary! I bet if an API you use broke backwards
| compatibility just so it could `color` to `colour` you'd
| be arguing against it too!
| afavour wrote:
| OK so we're finally at the actual core of the matter: the
| technical arguments aren't actually valid, it's that you
| don't think it's worth the minimal effort because you
| don't personally know of anyone that is offended by the
| master/slave connotation of "master" branches. That's
| always the actual core of the complaint yet everyone
| dances around it.
| fuzxi wrote:
| He didn't dance around it; it was the first thing he
| said. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26455182
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > I still haven't seen a single person say "my great
| grandfather was a slave and this offends me", only people
| saying "this might offend someone".
|
| In today's world, it's enough for many companies. Si vis
| pacem, para bellum. You don't want to passively wait
| until you're attacked, you need to prepare the defenses
| first so your enemies don't even have a ground to stand.
| schoolornot wrote:
| We all know exactly the kind of people driving this change.
| We've worked with them. We know how they function on teams
| and in the office. We know they aren't particularly good at
| what they do, barring a few exceptions. And we know what they
| will do to us, to our jobs, and to our companies if we don't
| bow to their demands.
| oap_bram wrote:
| I don't know, seems like a very weird subjective reality
| you're trying to push in an objective one. I am one of
| those people, yet I haven't had any significant problems
| with my work ethic.
|
| Pushing a narrative that these people are "gonna do
| something to us" is a weird one to push. What's gonna
| happen? We're gonna be kinder to one another? We would want
| to make people around us happy in a profoundly human way
| rather than a shallow one?
|
| Just to follow you along in your way of thinking. What are
| "we" gonna do to your job and your companies? I honestly
| fail to see what you mean.
| cobraetor wrote:
| Claiming without evidence that African Americans are
| offended (not to mention it is patronizing to them) by a
| term like "master" is subjective reality.
|
| Cancel culture, which grand parent is referring to, is
| real. You will find many anecdotes on Hacker News. Here
| is one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21484347
| 1123581321 wrote:
| If an employer or coworker doesn't agree to whatever is
| your latest demand, "you" would start a campaign to get
| them fired or contact their customers to try to lose them
| business. Happens regularly.
| oap_bram wrote:
| I mean, that would imply you would prefer a term that is
| in a way discriminatory to a particular group right? Not
| in bad faith, but it seems you kind off admitted that
| there is some evil in doing so, and that you're willing
| to do it.
|
| Also, I wouldn't do that. Emancipating an actual
| workforce or colleagues would be my solution, not making
| the company suffer under it.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| No, but that's the reasoning you would use, that anyone
| disagreeing with you must be evil or discriminatory.
| cuddlecake wrote:
| I don't like the continuing insinuation that there's "some loud
| obnoxious screams from certain SJW-like people".
|
| Usually it's just loud obnoxious screams from Anti-SJW people,
| and people blindly following the call to arms against what they
| call "SJW bullshit".
| oap_bram wrote:
| Yeah that's true, and I feel you on that. It's just that when
| conversing with people that do feel like these "SJWs" exist,
| makes it seem more nuanced, since you're distancing yourself
| from that stigma even though you're saying things relatively
| similar to SJWs.
|
| Honestly, I just do it avoid being called one, even though
| I'm not in any way close to something that could be defined
| as a SJW.
| easytiger wrote:
| > I for one think it's great that people are willing to make
| things a little more accessible for more people.
|
| This doesn't achieve that. It very clearly does nothing.
|
| Human beings as basic pattern matching engines have been hacked
| by things like twitter to amplify beyond reasonableness many
| concepts and ideas which they are shown as related and then
| regurgitate and spread.
|
| Whilst this in particular may not be "important" it is
| certainly but one minor example of a very serious trend that is
| demonstrating a very low latency mechanism at play for creating
| fast paced change in western society that undermines the
| strengths of slow change that made it so successful.
|
| Now you might be the kind of person who might have a desire to
| see those fundamentals undermined under a guise of faux
| altruistic reasonableness, I don't know, but the overly
| simplistic acceptance of it indicates an avoidance of any of
| the reasons why people might be resistant to it. Thus why i
| question your motivations here.
| mswtk wrote:
| > I for one think it's great that people are willing to make
| things a little more accessible for more people. If people want
| to be part of our community of developers I think it's great
| that these organizations listen to people who might have a
| problem with certain terminology. Even though I don't have a
| problem with those terms, I think it's still worth evaluating
| if they're worth keeping if it makes it harder for someone to
| be part of our community.
|
| Is it more accessible? As in, is this change driven by
| complaints from actual people who feel excluded by the
| terminology? As far as I'm aware, none of the projects making
| these changes even claims that, it's all speculation on behalf
| of hypothetical offended parties.
|
| Not that it really makes it less annoying to have terminology
| used by people from all over the world be dictated by American
| cultural sensibilities, but it's easier to stomach if there's
| some material justification behind the change.
| oap_bram wrote:
| I don't know, I can't speak for the people who's access is
| limited. However, I am Dutch and can say that these cultural
| sensibilities are far outside of just the "American" one.
|
| There are plenty of people that struggle with this
| terminology in a realistic way. Even if you can't find
| anecdotal evidence of someone being offended by this, you can
| rationally come to the conclusion that it might be worth
| changing it. And for it to be accessible, it doesn't need to
| come 100% from the people that face problems with the
| terminology. If it were to be 100% those people, than it
| would be a great from of cultural emancipation however!
| mswtk wrote:
| I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for at least
| a couple actual examples of this change helping people feel
| better about participating in technology. In the absence of
| such, it all feels very performative and, dare I say, a
| cheap way to score good PR for participating organizations.
| I don't think it really hurts anyone to an extent that it
| should be opposed, but neither does it really help, until
| proven otherwise.
|
| > However, I am Dutch and can say that these cultural
| sensibilities are far outside of just the "American" one.
|
| Are they? Does the master/slave terminology also have very
| negative connotations in your culture? I thought it was
| almost exclusively an American thing due to their
| historical circumstances.
| oap_bram wrote:
| I would suggest looking up what the Dutch did in relation
| to race equality in history and how we were involved in a
| lot of slave trade, sometimes even to the US.
|
| I would say you have a point with saying it's
| performative, and I don't have anything to counter that.
| However, perhaps your energy could be spent looking for
| someone that is actually offended by this to counter your
| own perspective?
|
| Kinda Karl Popper style of disprove your own theory?
| mswtk wrote:
| > I would suggest looking up what the Dutch did in
| relation to race equality in history and how we were
| involved in a lot of slave trade, sometimes even to the
| US.
|
| I am aware of the history, but that's not enough to give
| the words themselves emotional charge and significance.
| The reason this is so for Americans is that the
| consequences of slavery and racial segregation are keenly
| felt _right now_ - it 's not just an abstract wrong
| committed on people long ago and far away. As a point of
| comparison, I'm from Eastern Europe, and the word "slave"
| is derived from "Slav" - but this is effectively ancient
| history with little bearing on the present, and so the
| word doesn't carry any emotional charge or special
| meaning.
|
| To put things differently, is there a segment of the
| Dutch populace for whom the words "master" and "slave"
| signify that kind of viscerally felt injustice, as they
| do for black people in the US? This isn't a gotcha
| question, I genuinely don't know, and these kinds can be
| arbitrary and irrational. For Poles, "slavery" is
| abstract, but "forced labor" brings up some major traumas
| from around World War 2, for example.
|
| > Kinda Karl Popper style of disprove your own theory?
|
| I was hoping someone would do it for me in this thread.
| :) Might still happen, if not, I might have to do some
| digging.
| cobraetor wrote:
| > Is it more accessible? As in, is this change driven by
| complaints from actual people who feel excluded by the
| terminology? As far as I'm aware, none of the projects making
| these changes even claims that, it's all speculation on
| behalf of hypothetical offended parties.
|
| I'm an African American, and no I'm not offended by Git's
| branch name. White progressives spend so much time on virtue
| signalling but hardly pay any attention to pressing Black
| problems like Black poverty and education.
| buzzert wrote:
| Genuine question: do you feel like the changes are also
| condescending?
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _dictated by American cultural sensibilities_
|
| The English-language Internet (and tech) field has a large
| centre of gravity in the US, so those of us outside of the US
| do tend view a lot of the rending of garments on some topics
| to be quite strange.
| loeg wrote:
| > Say what you want, be we all know we've done silly refactors
| over smaller things.
|
| As a very very junior dev, I had "nuke" in a function name, and
| logging that included the function's name. Turns out Japanese
| customers are not super big fans of nukes. Lesson learned,
| small change made, life goes on.
| john_alan wrote:
| We should probably stop referring to nice teeth as straight and
| white too. Wouldn't want to offend.
|
| If you can't disambiguate software development from human abuse
| the problem is your grasp of semantics not society.
| pdxandi wrote:
| This just seems like a wholly childish comment. White and
| straight seem like good descriptions for teeth.
|
| Why do you feel outraged by the conversation around improving
| technology to be more inclusive?
| [deleted]
| john_alan wrote:
| Because if you apply this equally you can't use the word
| "pussy cat".
|
| We have to get real. These problems are real. So tackle them
| in a real way.
|
| Renaming branches in version control is virtue signalling
| horseshit.
|
| Wake up.
| pdxandi wrote:
| Why are you so offended?
| av8avenger wrote:
| Personally i do not care about the change in the default name
| of the main / master branch in git.
|
| But i totally agree with you on the point that we should be
| able to differentiate such terms from their meaning in another
| context. I see how this can offend people but honestly the only
| thing we'll ever be able to do is change the labels on such
| things. We're assuming so many of those words to be a defacto
| standard in IT that they won't die anytime soon.
| eli wrote:
| We made this change for our repos internally a year or two ago.
| Making it the default is a great step and I hope others follow
| suit.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Light and dark / white and black have been symbols of good and
| bad from long time, is that racist?
| truculent wrote:
| Either
|
| (1) Default name doesn't have inherent value; therefore, changing
| the default isn't a big deal (low downside), even if the upside
| is low
|
| (2) "master" is for some reason a better name than "main"
|
| I never see the people complaining about this stuff spelling out
| a reason why it's a bad idea to change (2), and am forced to
| conclude that we are in scenario (1).
|
| It seems to me that opinion is much more divided on the amount of
| upside in changing the name. But if the downside is virtually
| non-existent, who cares? If this is important to some people,
| shouldn't we just listen to them, and move on?
| egwor wrote:
| We have auto merges setup vs master within bitbucket. I've
| asked our support team to raise it with them and get it
| addressed. Thats the only reason we've not changed it. We don't
| develop off master anymore anyway, so it is a bit of a moot
| point from anyone using the repo. The main annoyance is that
| when you clone a repo it always comes from master so you have
| to tell people.
| depr wrote:
| There is a downside which is all aliases and snippets which
| assume `master` and no longer work (or work across
| repositories).
| mjw1007 wrote:
| Web links can break too. A URL that could previously be used
| to retrieve the most recent version of a document may no
| longer do so.
|
| I've already read one bug report where two people were
| talking at cross-purposes for a considerable time because one
| of them was reading a stale version of a proposed standard
| for this reason.
|
| It's hardly the largest cause of <<Cool URIs don't
| change>>[1] violations out there, but it's enough to cause
| some real trouble.
|
| [1] https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
| detaro wrote:
| Assuming a repo has not changed a default is kinda broken
| either way, so if this leads to more fixed software... (had
| quite a few annoying moments with repos that didn't use
| master as the main branch for whatever reason (e.g. having
| "develop" and release-specific branches)) and tools that
| insisted that had to be what I wanted)
| truculent wrote:
| At the risk of being too dismissive - that sounds like
| incipient tech debt coming due, rather than a new problem
| entirely (yes, the line between those things is blurred)
| IshKebab wrote:
| I don't know why you've missed the obvious:
|
| (3) "master" is a bit worse than "main" but changing it now is
| annoying.
|
| It's like how electrons are negative or an inch isn't exactly
| 25mm or Pi is half of full turn instead of just a full turn,
| etc. They all could have defined better but changing them now
| would be more trouble than it's worth.
|
| > the downside is virtually non-existent, who cares?
|
| Because a) it isn't virtually non-existent. It means you have
| to configure another thing on all systems you use git on, it
| means pretty much all existing tutorials are now wrong, and it
| means all scripts that assume `master` (a pretty reasonable
| assumption!) are now broken.
|
| And b) it's the principle of the thing! People don't want SJWs
| to win the argument.
| kbd wrote:
| The most unfortunate part of all this churn is that git didn't
| provide a way to ask it what a repository's main branch is named.
| [deleted]
| detaro wrote:
| You can resolve to which branch <remote>/HEAD points? (as far
| as I understand, local repos don't have a concept of a "main
| branch", it's only a thing concern remotes and the default
| branch checked out when cloning them?)
| kbd wrote:
| > as far as I understand, local repos don't have a concept of
| a "main branch" $ git init
| Initialized empty Git repository in... $ git
| symbolic-ref --short HEAD main $ git switch
| --create feature-branch Switched to a new branch
| 'feature-branch' $ git switch ???
|
| > You can resolve to which branch <remote>/HEAD points?
|
| Correct, this is the best way I've found. I have this as a
| git-alias: main-branch = !basename $(git
| symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD)
|
| But it doesn't help for local repositories that don't have a
| remote. And it's ironic to need to use "origin" for that,
| which is itself a "master/main"-like default remote name.
| detaro wrote:
| that's what I mean: "main" is just the automatically
| created branch so that there is a branch for HEAD to point
| to in an empty repo. It's not special in any functional way
| locally. I.e. if I create "develop" and delete "main",
| locally nothing in git itself will ever miss "main" or
| needs to be told that "develop" is the primary branch,
| because that's not a concept locally (afaik). It knows the
| current branch (HEAD), that's it. So wanting to look it up
| locally doesn't make sense from gits perspective, although
| maybe the ability to tag a branch as such would be useful
| for some tooling, but it would in a way introduce the
| concept to git, not expose something it hides now.
| rualca wrote:
| This is not unfortunate at all. This is something that only has
| an impact when you create a brand new git repo,which is
| relatively rare.
|
| When that happened, you could just rename the original master
| branch.
|
| Nevertheless, git added support for this option less than a
| year ago.
|
| https://github.blog/2020-07-27-highlights-from-git-2-28/#int...
| kbd wrote:
| > This is something that only has an impact when you create a
| brand new git repo,which is relatively rare.
|
| What a strange thing to claim, when both this thread and the
| original post talk about things that need to update based on
| the change, such as CI/CD scripts, git aliases, and so on.
|
| > Nevertheless, git added support for this option less than a
| year ago.
|
| Yes, I'm just saying it's strange that git added support to
| customize the name, but then didn't add a way to ask it what
| it's configured to, given that things will depend on knowing
| what that name is.
| rualca wrote:
| > What a strange thing to claim, when both this thread and
| the original post talk about things that need to update
| based on the change, such as CI/CD scripts, git aliases,
| and so on.
|
| I believe I've said something that's easy to understand, at
| least without bad faith.
|
| Git end users create repos only rarely, but creating
| preconfigured Git repos is gitlab's business. This
| discussion is about gitlab's announcement. Do you have a
| hard time understanding any of this?
|
| > Yes, I'm just saying it's strange that git added support
| to customize the name, but then didn't add a way to ask it
| what it's configured to, given that things will depend on
| knowing what that name is.
|
| It's called software development best practices,
| particularly adding changes in a backward-compatible way so
| that not to change the expected behavior.
| Shish2k wrote:
| > I believe I've said something that's easy to
| understand, at least without bad faith.
|
| I'm pretty sure I understand what you're saying - "this
| change only affects creation of new repos"?
|
| The responder isn't missing your point, they're
| disagreeing with it - they're pointing out that anybody
| who needs to work with a repo now needs to explicitly
| configure the name of the canonical branch, where
| previously they could safely assume the default was
| "master"; ergo it affects anybody who uses a repo for as
| long as it exists, not just the repo creator and not just
| at repo creation time.
|
| > adding changes in a backward-compatible way so that not
| to change the expected behavior
|
| The expected behaviour until recently was that "git
| checkout master" would take you to the canonical source
| branch - this behaviour has changed, in a backward-
| incompatible way (any code which worked in the past by
| using that command now needs to be changed)
| darepublic wrote:
| I think it's important for people to resist this senseless
| exercise in imposing conformity, for its own sake.
| Chainloader wrote:
| Hmmm this explain why git push origin master failed for me...
| hYKdTfpa wrote:
| This change does no good, it serves only to allow people to
| virtue signal.
| [deleted]
| vshager wrote:
| I wonder if I can use my MainCard [tm] for credit card payments
| at GitLab.
|
| Do they exclude people with main degrees? Chess grand mains? Main
| painters?
|
| And don't get me started on the racist audio recording studios
| ...
| elric wrote:
| I would like to point out that it's perfectly OK to have
| master/slave relations between computers, hard disks and git
| branches. The only place where it's problematic is between
| humans. Perhaps we would do well to remember that words can have
| different meanings in different contexts. It's nice to try to be
| considerate of people who are sensitive to certain issues, but at
| the same time they would do well to limit their sensitivity to
| where it's appropriate.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Master / slave are catch all terms versus more precise ones
| that represent the exact relationship of two systems.
| pdxandi wrote:
| I personally prefer primary/secondary anyway.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| So do I, but I wouldn't care enough to start a debate about
| it.
| pdxandi wrote:
| If you did care enough to debate about it, that's okay.
| easytiger wrote:
| That doesn't infer the same relationship of dependency, but
| infers a parallel independent relationship.
|
| Not the same thing.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Primary / Replica.
| noxer wrote:
| Its perfectly fine between humans as well. The difference
| between humans an machines is, one can and should give consent
| the other not.
| Shish2k wrote:
| > Perhaps we would do well to remember that words can have
| different meanings in different contexts.
|
| I'm afraid this idea is rapidly becoming deprecated - now if a
| word has multiple meanings, we pick whichever one is most
| offensive and forget the others
|
| (No judgement on whether that's a good thing or not, I see pros
| and cons)
| fileeditview wrote:
| Absolutely.. most people complaining about this seem to want to
| purge the concept itself.. which is crazy to me. The concept is
| just that. It is not good or bad if you don't involve any human
| parties and practise it. It just describes that one or many
| entities control one or many other entities.
|
| Culture has become oversensitive in a bad way. And IMO changing
| "master" to "main" won't help fight racism at all. It is just
| some useless showpiece action to render whoever it does as a
| good person or company.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| franky47 wrote:
| Since we're talking about naming branches, what are your
| preferred names for branches ? I like 4-letter names:
| - `main` points to the last release for libraries (along with
| tags for history) - `prod` points to production in
| deployable projects (not libraries) - `next` is the
| development branch for the next version - `deps` is a
| temporary branch for dependency updates, squashed and merged
| regularly onto `next`
| dvdgsng wrote:
| Good for you that you found something that works for you. But
| why the random length restrictions to 4 chars, seems kind of
| outdated? Also, how does using only a "next" branch for
| development scale for teams (maybe using a fork-based
| workflow?).
|
| While I use a similar approach like yours on my personal
| projects, I still prefer the widely known and battle proven
| Git-Flow when working on agile teams: -
| master - develop (optional) - feature/*
| - release/* - bugfix/* (optional) - hotfix/*
| corobo wrote:
| Git flow doesn't care what you call your branches.
| dvdgsng wrote:
| correct, it doesn't, but using a quite common scheme like
| this makes onboarding and reasoning about git-related
| issues easier. YMMV.
| narven wrote:
| When I think that people are not that stupid, there's always
| someone that surprises me.
|
| What on earth has the name "master" to do with anything? Why dont
| we remove the word "master" from all languages in the world and
| make it a tabu to even speak of it. What does master/slave in
| relation to "hu-mans" has to do with anything else in the world
| that has the same name?
|
| Just the amount of money and work hours done by everyone just to
| make this completely stupid change and not to mention behing
| completely stupid, its insane, could feed all the starving people
| on the world.
|
| MY BRANCH WILL ALWAYS BE CALLED MASTER IN ALL THE PROJECTS I
| CONTROL, TILL THE DAY I DIE.
|
| PS: Sometimes I wonder if people actually have work to be done,
| to take us to the futur and beyond, or they just go to the toilet
| and come up with these ideas.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Please don't be hysterical.
|
| In case you're getting angry at the downvotes, I can tell you
| why you're getting them. There are only two lines of content in
| your comment other than tribal affiliation signal. One of them
| is a factually obviously false statement ("Just the amount of
| money and work hours done... to make this... change... could
| feed all the starving people on the world"); one of them is a
| question answered in the first paragraph of the article ("What
| on earth has the name "master" to do with anything?").
| furgooswft13 wrote:
| > One of them is a factually obviously false statement ("Just
| the amount of money and work hours done... to make this...
| change... could feed all the starving people on the world")
|
| Hyperbole for this one thing to be sure, but the amount of
| money _and_ time spent in total on the Social Justice
| Industrial Complex over the past few years could probably
| have terraformed Mars. What a waste.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Please never use the word hysterical. It is deeply rooted in
| hate against women.
| sceptical wrote:
| In the current climate it is impossible to determine if
| this is serious or a joke. This is in itself hysterical.
| narven wrote:
| why would I be angry with downvotes? They dont mean anything
| to me. In the meantime, I just created another repo with
| branch called... master.
| stnmtn wrote:
| Cool man hope you feel extremely badass for doing that!
| nobody0 wrote:
| Actually, almost all of our ancestors had been slaves longer or
| shorter in history regardless of race/country.
| alacombe wrote:
| It only matter in an American context. Nobody's give a rat fuck
| about white people enslaving other white people, or black
| people still enslaving other people in Africa TODAY.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Sad that the article fails to mention what proportion of people
| of color are employed by GitLab, how that number is evolving, and
| what steps they're taking to avoid actual discrimination ; as
| well as their policies regarding the role of contemporary forced
| labor in their hardware supply chain. (It's entirely possible
| they're doing the best they can on those fronts, too.)
|
| Such a renaming is clearly a "long hanging fruit", and a way to
| start a conversation.
|
| I can't entirely shake up, though, that though that any minute
| discussing the naming of git branch repositories is _not_ spent
| on discussing slavery and racism. Which I 'm unfortunately not
| qualified to do.
| naebother wrote:
| If we must have a struggle-session on this and rename to appease
| the performative gods, why not just call the default branch, you
| know, "default"?
| benibela wrote:
| Yes, this is such a silly Git problem
|
| In Mercurial it is always "default", and in SVN one used to use
| "trunk"
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| I see this article is flagged. Really? Can't we even discuss this
| issue like adults?
| dang wrote:
| Unfortunately the answer isn't necessarily yes. In this case,
| though, I think people may be reacting more to the fact that
| this topic has had dozens of submissions and at least a dozen
| major discussions in the last year.
| lamontcg wrote:
| father/son nodes were changed to parent/child long before
| "wokeness" or "SJWs" or even "PC"
| av8avenger wrote:
| Are there actually any devs out there that are really offended
| and feel excluded or worse than others because the default git
| branch is called master?
|
| I work in a fairly small company, but if i think of all the
| things we'd have to change in our infrastructure to exclude all
| of those offending words (like Black- and White-Lists), we'd
| probably be busy for a couple of weeks.
| pdxandi wrote:
| > we'd probably be busy for a couple weeks
|
| You would get paid to implement more descriptive systems.
| Sounds like a good deal to me.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| How is blacklist and whitelist offensive now? It seems that
| some people have nothing better to do than make trouble for the
| sake of it.
| ec109685 wrote:
| It reinforces black is bad and white is good.
|
| Also, deny list and allow list are more precise terms anyway.
| alacombe wrote:
| Black bad and white good will remain until you feel safer
| in pitch BLACK night than during daylight. It has nothing
| to do with American socio-cultural societal illness.
| totony wrote:
| >Also, deny list and allow list are more precise terms
| anyway.
|
| Are they? Black/whitelist feels way more natural to me. You
| can also say things like "blacklisted this ip" instead of
| "adding to the deny list" or something.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Add this ip to the deny list.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| It's really very easy. "denylisted this IP"
| Smaug123 wrote:
| I prefer "blocklist" and "allowlist" which sound more
| natural to me, but you could certainly use "denylisted
| this IP".
| africanboy wrote:
| blacklist was never intended to mean black people, but
| undesired people
|
| it doesn't reinforce the idea that black is bad and white
| is good, it was modelled around the idea that black is bad
| and white is good.
|
| Because for humans black (dark) is bad and white (light) is
| good.
|
| Black cats were considered a symbol of bad luck because
| they were invisible in the dark, not because they resembled
| black people.
| [deleted]
| macspoofing wrote:
| Yeah, I get it. It is a necessary change just so you take this of
| the table and not deal with the sporadic complaints that would
| come. Keeping the 'master' or 'master-slave' (in context of HA)
| terms just isn't worth potentially offending someone, or losing a
| sale, or getting bad press. We changed our verbage a couple years
| in our product as well just for that reason (Master-Slave to
| Primary-Secondary). The previous company I worked at (circa 2006)
| did the same as well after a complaint, so this nomenclature
| change was happening for a few years now. Meh, whatever.
|
| It would be nice if that was the end of it, but it feels like
| we're now just looking for things to be offended by. For example,
| I have to admit that the terms 'whitelist'/'blacklist' being
| labeled as not 'inclusive' caught me by surprise because my brain
| didn't even make that connection ... at all. I wish we, the
| global community, didn't all have to pay for America's internal
| cultural hangups.
| raydev wrote:
| That's a lot of words to say "this is a good change and nothing
| has been lost." Incredible that this post has almost 200
| comments.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Time has been lost. When management required this change, it
| broke some test and deploy automation, and some git non-
| experts screwed up their clones and needed help.
| fuzxi wrote:
| He didn't say it's a good change. He said it's a CYA move
| that's become necessary.
| ec109685 wrote:
| The terms whitelist and blacklist aren't very precise. The
| better terms allow list, deny list or something that more
| concretely describes the auth model are actually helpful.
| yongjik wrote:
| The terms "whitelist/blacklist" are no less precise than
| stack, heap, queue, memory, signal, object, class, instance,
| process, and so on. They acquired precise meaning not by
| etymology but by usage. It's silly to argue "Oh you didn't
| want these terms anyway: they're not precise enough."
|
| Well, the whole discussion is made of silly hills not worth
| dying on, so to speak, so maybe it's par for the course ...
| macspoofing wrote:
| Sure. The existing terms are a little quirky and you can make
| the argument that 'allow' and 'deny' lists make more sense
| ... but come on man, why be obtuse? You know that's not why
| these terms are being changed.
| snicker7 wrote:
| In 2022: the terms "allowlist" and "denylist" evoke the
| realization that marginalized groups where and are DENIED
| privileges afforded to others. You are now cancelled.
| jlizzle30 wrote:
| The natural conclusion of the black/whitelist argument is
| renaming the colors.
| devnull255 wrote:
| If you dig a little deeper you might find your brain does make
| that kind of connection subconsciously.
|
| This article gives a nice introduction into the work of
| cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.
| https://theconversation.com/how-did-white-become-a-
| metaphor-.... The language constructs we use embed positive and
| negative associations with the words used to describe black or
| white things, low or high concepts.
|
| But I have to admit my bewilderment with the default branch
| name change too. I've seen older uses of the word master to
| mean original source of truth or master of students -- or
| padawan.
|
| I believe it's better to live in a time where we think more
| seriously about the words we choose to use than in one we
| don't. Language is fluid and always changing anyway.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >If you dig a little deeper you might find your brain does
| make that kind of connection subconsciously.
|
| I'm sure the brain makes all kinds of connections
| subconsciously. The _specific_ claim though is that your
| brain makes racist connections (where 'racist' is broadly
| defined by certain kinds of social 'scientists', where the
| academic field of 'social science' in general is sloppy and
| non-rigorous), with the corollary being that you then perform
| racist actions. Those propositions are wholly unproven and on
| the surface strike me as pseudo-science.
|
| I have also yet to see any evidence that that cultural
| connotations behind the colors 'white' and 'black' (like
| 'white is pure' and 'black is evil') actually even maps to
| people or racist behaviour. Do people see 'dark eyes' or
| 'black hair' as evil? First I hear of that. And I'm not even
| sure if the white/black connotations are cultural at all. I
| suspect that they come from something deeper, namely,
| nighttime was/is dangerous for our species. As I child, I was
| afraid of the dark and I can guarantee it had nothing to do
| with race or anything from culture. Where did I learn that?
| dvdgsng wrote:
| > your brain does make that kind of connection subconsciously
|
| This should work both ways then. So loving black tea, black
| humor, Black Mirror, Black Swan and the color black in
| general would make me like "black people" more because my
| brain does the wiring subconsciously when it reads the term
| "black"? Nope. Don't think so. But maybe making everything
| about race is, well, racist?
| martin8412 wrote:
| This will absolutely cost customers.. The rest of the world is
| getting fed up with the US. Most of the world is not as deeply
| racist and the US... Master is not associated with anything
| negative here.
| sacomo wrote:
| "Whatever you do, don't use gitlab. They changed their
| default git branch to 'main'."
| TechnoTimeStop wrote:
| It's not America. America is the only truly free country. Only
| 15 counties in the world allow you to even own land if you're
| not from a specific religious group, ethnicity, or born in the
| country.
|
| And guess what they're all western democracies.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| What? Citation needed. Unless you're talking about
| citizenship/permanent residence being a prerequisite to
| owning land, there's 27 countries in the EU alone that I
| think serve as counterexamples...
| somedude895 wrote:
| > I wish we, the global community, didn't all have to pay for
| America's internal cultural hangups.
|
| Can't wait for Disney to remove any references to the "Dark
| Side" in Star Wars, Harry Potter to rename the "Dark Arts" into
| the "Bad Arts" and Lord of the Rings' "Black Riders" to become
| the "Evil Horsemen."
|
| Nobody ever used to connect the term "blacklist" to race. But
| common sense doesn't seem to play a role anymore.
| ondrek wrote:
| Seeing black / whitelists discussions I always wonder, if
| white color is racist also by containg all wavelengths, while
| black suffers by absencing visible light.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >if white color is racist also by containg all wavelengths,
| while black suffers by absencing visible light.
|
| This definition of white/black colors is context dependent.
|
| In some contexts white is defined as a combination of
| colors, and black is absence of colors.
|
| In some contexts (e.g. art) white is defined as absence of
| colors, and black is a combination of colors.
| david-gpu wrote:
| It is not a matter of context or definitions. It's a
| matter of the underlying physical process.
|
| Typical computer displays generate colors by adding light
| of different wavelengths. However, paint pigments
| generate colors by absorbing light of different
| wavelengths.
|
| Whether a system emits light directly, like a computer
| screen, or reflects incoming light, like a painted
| canvas, the perception of color is still determined by
| the wavelengths of the photons reaching the observer.
| yongjik wrote:
| > You are on this council, but we do not grant you the rank
| of Main.
|
| > What? How can you do this?! This is outrageous! It's
| unfair! How can you be on the council and not be a Main?!
|
| I dunno, the dialogues were always terrible in the prequels,
| maybe it will improve matters. :/
| diomedes wrote:
| > But common sense doesn't seem to play a role anymore.
|
| If it were just a common sense problem the damage could be
| reverted in it's due time. It is about hierarchy, if you put
| weak people in power they'll game the system and push
| whatever the mob wants, it won't stop with random tech lingo.
| noxer wrote:
| Sounds like justification for capitulating to the woke nonsense
| and cancel culture to me.
|
| >....feels like we're now just looking for things to be
| offended by
|
| Exactly, no one should have ever listen to this nonsense. There
| is no end goal here being offended is the goal. Just imagine
| the millions of man-hours* of non-productive work this will
| cause over the next decades.
|
| *nothing here lol
| tasogare wrote:
| > There is no end goal here being offended is the goal.
|
| Nop, it's a mean. Being perceived as a victim is very
| bankable these days, so the craze will continue with more
| people being offended and asking compensations (often
| monetary) for it.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I don't mind so much when the renames make sense or are more
| comprehensible... master to primary for DBs, master to main for
| git. Indeed whitelist/blacklist is just ridiculous overreach,
| what can you do.
|
| But Github went way too far by aggressively pushing devs to
| rename their own local master branches to main. This caught me
| by surprise and I almost accidentally renamed the branch of one
| of my previous clients.
|
| https://twitter.com/Adys/status/1354468440753508355
|
| Really gross.
| easton wrote:
| Does it still do this if you don't have your default branch
| set to main? I had to specifically go and set that on a
| settings page somewhere.
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