Subject: [bug#76407] [GCD] Rename the default branch

From: Liliana Marie Prikler <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2025 14:52:40 +0100

Am Mittwoch, dem 26.03.2025 um 13:21 +0100 schrieb Andreas Enge:
> Concerning the name, the current standard for git repositories is
> "master".  Apart from that, I have only seen "main". So maybe we can
> agree that all other names are not practical? There is muscle memory
> involved in typing "git checkout ...", and I do not see any point in
> choosing a completely separate name only for the Guix project. 
I'm pretty sure SVN users will remember trunk :)
And I don't think that "practical" is necessarily defined on the number
of other projects that use the same branch name.  Perhaps within the
wider Guix ecosystem, though, a single default branch name is
preferable over an "anything goes" approach, and we seem to be heading
towards "main" if we follow this route.

> Also, my impression is that it would be better to rather quickly
> delete the master branch if we change names instead of keeping it
> around. It would be better to create an error instead of letting
> people stick with an outdated branch. In particular, we should make
> sure that "guix pull" either works with the new name or breaks
> visibly, so that people do not remain on "master" while thinking they
> are updating their system.
Could you elaborate on this?  My proposal to keep "master" for the time
being, but pointing it towards "main" would make it unlikely that an
upgrade is not a real upgrade.  Then, once configurations default to
using main, we can make upgrades smooth for everyone using the default
configuration.

The default configuration holds a special place here, because Guix is
also used by people who do not have a deep understanding of all of its
parts and would find a sudden, unprompted `guix pull' failure quite
confusing.

> Now to the bike shedding part. Personally, I only associate positive
> things with "master" and its versions in other languages. Usually
> the word designates a person with particular training in a skill:
> A "master of arts" has a university degree, a "maître menuisier" or
> "Tischlermeister" is particularly trained in original woodwork, more
> so than a "compagnon" or "Geselle", a "maestro" takes part in
> creating exceptionally nice music.
I think this is clearer in other languages, where the use of the word
master is more narrow and some uses, e.g. the German "lord over a
people or dominion" have fallen out of fashion.  Also, "master" doesn't
translate uniquely into those languages, e.g. in German it's "meister"
for the Tischlermeister, but "magister" or "magistra" for the academic
degree – that is, until we started using English wherever we had
previously used Latin or French.

> The negative connotations of the word "master" seem to come only from
> a US American viewpoint from the word pair "master"/"slave"; so from
> my point of view, we are importing a US American culture war, by
> which I do not feel concerned, into our international project.
There is also the German word "Herrenrasse" which translates into
English as "master race"… and I don't think UK or US English makes much
of a difference w.r.t. that.

Also, I don't know enough French computing lingo to be sure, but TIL
that according to Wiktionary, maître/esclave is a thing.

> All this is somewhat ironic: We start by using a language that is
> foreign to many or probably even most of us, and end up being
> expected to share also the cultural connotations linked to that
> language (in a particular part of the world) that would not pose a
> problem if we had used a different language from the start.
Well, using a common language, we can come to a common understanding.  

> So maybe we should name the principal branch "caput" or "κεφάλαιο".
Maybe "head", alluding to "HEAD"?  "caput" sadly has the meaning
"broken" if we pronounce it German ;)  We could also use "tête" if we
wanna be French about it :)

Cheers