Bug 213181 - We should rename master branch on git repositories
Summary: We should rename master branch on git repositories
Status: RESOLVED CONFIGURATION CHANGED
Alias: None
Product: WebKit
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Evangelism (show other bugs)
Version: WebKit Nightly Build
Hardware: Unspecified Unspecified
: P2 Normal
Assignee: Jon Davis
URL:
Keywords: InRadar
Depends on:
Blocks: 213092
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Reported: 2020-06-14 08:00 PDT by Caitlin Potter (:caitp)
Modified: 2021-05-18 13:40 PDT (History)
9 users (show)

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Description Caitlin Potter (:caitp) 2020-06-14 08:00:17 PDT
In solidarity with the movement for black lives, many popular git repositories have been replacing their default "master" branch to something not associated with the historical bondage of black people. This could potentially improve things for some contributors, by removing one small abuse for them. It's a small thing, but it's worth doing.

I'm sure there might be some technical difficulties in doing it, I have no idea how this might interact with various scripts or git-svn integration, but I see this as worth doing.

For reference, there are loads of references on social media pointing to mailing list archives and source code which explicitly states that "master" in git refers to the master/slave relationship, such as https://twitter.com/tobie/status/1270290278029631489.
Comment 1 Radar WebKit Bug Importer 2020-06-14 08:00:28 PDT
<rdar://problem/64341261>
Comment 2 Maciej Stachowiak 2020-06-14 23:45:43 PDT
git repositories of WebKit are all mirrors of the official Subversion repository. We will need appropriate support in git-svn and other tooling. Nevertheless this seems like a good change to make.
Comment 3 Jonathan Bedard 2021-05-18 13:40:29 PDT
When importing our canonical repository to GitHub, we made this change:
https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit

Over the next few months, we will be deprecating the git.webkit.org checkouts. Since those mirrors are being deprecated, we do not intend to switch the default branch on these to main