Re: RES: Can git change?

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

Any repository created on GitHub will have that branch name by default.
Likewise on Azure DevOps. I fully expect the other hosters to follow at
some stage, and also for `git init` to change the default in a future
version (I am working toward that goal).

GitLab product person here, we are indeed planning to change this in
our next major release 14.0, shipping on 2021-05-22.

What is the tentative timeline for `git init` to change in default to
`main` in the Git project? It would go a long way for the git
community.


Thanks,


Daniel Gruesso
On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 5:38 PM Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

And I have to admit that I am somewhat concerned about your students if
one of their instructors thinks that their education shouldn't prepare
them for more than working locally on their computers. Aren't they at all
interested in preparing the students for life after university? If so,
they will most certainly be affected by GitHub's decision.

GitHub's decision will most affect projects that haven't started
yet, simply because they won't have to incur any "transition" cost
the existing projects may have to consider.  And given enough time,
old projects die out and there will be more new projects than the
projects we currently have, hopefully.

Until that happens, they would be affected more by decision by the
projects they interact with, as it is most convenient if your local
name matches the name the upstream uses.  And the versions of Git
way before people started talking about 'master' and 'main' have
long been prepared for that, and we've been closing possible gaps in
the recent versions.  "git clone" would notice what name the upstream
uses and uses the same name locally.

Even when they work locally, they'll start getting 'main' from their
Git soon, and that would become consistent with the name that their
"upstream" projects are likely to choose due to this "industry wide"
push.

quoted

Any repository created on GitHub will have that branch name by default.
Likewise on Azure DevOps. I fully expect the other hosters to follow at
some stage, and also for `git init` to change the default in a future
version (I am working toward that goal).
...
Maybe Git itself is not a good example for that. Bigger projects face
dramatically bigger challenges replacing the default branch name because
of the short term disruption caused by it. Nevertheless, a growing number
of projects have already renamed their default branch, such as Snowpack
(https://github.com/snowpackjs/snowpack) and the react-refresh webpack
plugin (https://github.com/pmmmwh/react-refresh-webpack-plugin) but also
bigger ones such as LLVM (https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project).

Yes, thanks for giving Patricia and likeminded souls more usable
ammunition than just us ;-)