Cancelling The Master Branch

Language has meaning. Words have meaning. The metaphors we use have meaning. Even if we feel we are careful and try to communicate peacefully, we don’t need to leverage language that is triggering or unhelpful.

The tech community have been reflecting on ways in which language has not been inclusive and has been alienating to others - particularly our black friends and colleagues. That we still use blacklists and whitelists for good and bad or refer to devices as Master and Slave shows there is a way to go.

When you create a new Git project, it defaults to creating a master branch as the one branch to rule them all. I don’t find that language helpful and don’t feel it is necessary. So, I’ve been changing all of my default branches to main or production. It’s not always clear how so I made a few videos about it.

First, how to do it with a newly minted and fresh repo:

And, secondly how to do it with an existing Github repo:

Black Lives Matter. Let’s make sure our language always reflects that.