I'm a bit late to the game, but I don't understand what this fuss is all about, from a technical point of view. I just created a git repo this morning and the default branch was named "master" (using the git command line). Then I pushed it to github to make it visible, as I have done several times before. The command line instructions at the "new repository" interface on github suggest changing the branch name to main, but I did not do that (just for trying) and now I have a brand new github repository whose branch is named "master". Basically github allows to name your branches however you like. The example instructions suggest that you rename your master branch to "main", by running this code on your command line:

    git branch -M main

But that is all. You can name it "trunk" if you want, for all that matter.

Now, I think that the whole github renaming thing is a bit ridiculous and probably a faux pas on their part. But the people complaining about "the great rename" sound even more ridiculous: as far as I can see, there's no rename, just a stupid modification of the initialization instructions that suggest that users rename their branch. All that fuss for the damn "git branch -M" line?

Jenk

A lot of places will have extra effort in their CI/CD pipelines, too. I know, I know, commands like the following exist:

    grep -rl master | sed -ie "s/master/main/g"

but there's always going to be bugs or whatever come out of it, and also.. this misses the point of the article. It's a hollow virtue signal. It does literally nothing to help the cause it proclaims to help, yet it requires some effort from well.. everyone. It is the definitive example of a waste of time, al be it not much per instance, but some time is wasted.

enriquto

My point is that you do not need to follow github's suggestion and rename your branch to "main". It seems to me that github's "change" is only a suggestion in their instructions to create a new repository. They do not rename your branches nor force a name to you. You get to chose the name of your branches, and the default name for the git program is still "master".

Jenk

Which is still an empty gesture, that is still leading to wasted time.

FYI github's repo creation tool now defaults to main. A lot of orgs use this tool because they will also use repo templates. I know git, the program, is still defaulting to master.

rad_gruchalski

You can change it: https://github.com/settings/repositories.