From what GitHub has to say on the subject:

"The default branch is considered the “base” branch in your repository, against which all pull requests and code commits are automatically made, unless you specify a different branch."

Basically it's marking a branch as 'default' that makes it a default starting point, not its name. Explicit links for master would be most probably broken, so that's the price of change. Doesn't seem too high for me.

Fwiw, I do think that we should have a 

1. formerly master branch renamed into main/stable/base/trunk whatever which effectively represents last release
2. dev branch for ongoing work aimed towards the next release which should always be 'stable', meaning nothing should be merged in that breaks the tests
3. feature/bugfix branches for work in progress, only when builds are successful for the feature branch a pull/merge request to dev should be approved

M

On Thu, 2 Jul 2020 at 19:29, Hugh Cayless <philomousos@gmail.com> wrote:
My understanding is that "main" is the candidate default name (anyone who knows different should yell), and therefore GitHub might put in some affordances around that (maybe e.g. redirects from master to main? I dunno). So there *might* be advantages to choosing main. I quite like your idea of "stable" though. I guess "trunk" is another option too...

On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 1:08 PM Elisa Beshero-Bondar <ebbondar@gmail.com> wrote:
That seems prudent to get to work on changing to a standard and inoffensive branch name now. Would our use of “main” vs. “dev” be consistent with other projects like ours that work on regular updates and release cycles? If so, I see no issue really with using “main” if that’s the one people get used to referring to as the latest stable version. 

Elisa

Elisa Beshero-Bondar, PhD
Program Chair of Digital Media, Arts, and Technology | Professor of Digital Humanities |  Director of the Digital Humanities Lab at Penn State Erie, the Behrend College

Typeset by hand on my iPhone

On Jul 2, 2020, at 11:56 AM, Hugh Cayless <philomousos@gmail.com> wrote:


Would it make sense to try to do this (for TEI and Stylesheets) around the upcoming release then? We could create a "main" branch basically now (or immediately after we complete the fight about what to call it 😁) from master and then do the work to make sure everything ends up in main at release time, then remove master. 

Hugh

On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 11:47 AM Jessica Lu <jhl.jessica@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you, Hugh, for opening this conversation up among Council. Should be no surprise that I'm fully in favor of getting rid of 'master' and 'slave' language whenever possible.

I appreciate the points everyone else has raised upthread, and am heartened by Elisa's observation that this may be an opportune time to experiment with how such a change will impact the build process. Hugh and Nicholas are certainly right in pointing out that performative actions often hinder or distract from more substantive changes in practice and process; but (1) this is the sort of change that can have a big impact in Black and brown folks' encounters with TEI, insofar as it would dissolve an unnecessary barrier and guttural negative response to the grammar of encoding work; and (2) I think the spirit and intention behind this change does and can continue to carry forward into Council's everyday work. 

In general, my approach with these things is: if it's a small thing, why not change it (in addition to tackling bigger things), and if it's a big thing, better to start now than later. 

-j.

On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 11:27 AM Martin Holmes <mholmes@uvic.ca> wrote:
Hi Hugh,

I take your point, but I was thinking really that rather than doing the
archetypal "here let me fix that for you" thing that we tend to default
into, we should do more of the "shut up, step back and get out of the
way" approach proposed by Deb Verhoeven at DH2015.

Cheers,
Martin

On 2020-07-02 8:00 a.m., Hugh Cayless wrote:
> I'm going to gently disagree with you, Martin. I think it's precisely us
> old white people who need to work on picking apart the threads of
> structural racism and not put that work off on others. But I understand
> and sympathize with your reluctance to pronounce on this issue!
>
> All the best,
> Hugh
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 10:31 AM Martin Holmes <mholmes@uvic.ca
> <mailto:mholmes@uvic.ca>> wrote:
>
>     Hi all,
>
>     My gut feeling is that old white males like me should have no part in a
>     decision like this. We have (I hope) a large enough community of TEI
>     users who don't fall into my category, and they should tell us what's
>     appropriate.
>
>     Cheers,
>     Martin
>
>     On 2020-07-02 7:01 a.m., Hugh Cayless wrote:
>      > Hi All,
>      >
>      > Some of you may have come across the recent move toward changing the
>      > default branch name in Git away from "master" to (probably)
>     "main". My
>      > understanding is that GitHub is working on this, and that it will
>      > probably happen in Git as well. I'm aware of a number of projects
>     that
>      > are moving ahead immediately on renaming their master branches.
>      >
>      > On the one hand, I'm generally in favor of this. The "master"
>      > terminology probably came from BitKeeper, which had "master" and
>     "slave"
>      > repositories (rather than branches). I had always assumed it was
>     meant
>      > in the sense of "master copy", like in sound recordings. But see
>     also
>      > https://twitter.com/xpasky/status/1271477451756056577 from the
>     person
>      > responsible for the name (not a native English speaker).
>      >
>      > On the other hand, I'm slightly cynical about this sort of thing, as
>      > it's the kind of change one can make and feel righteous about
>     without
>      > being *actually* significantly anti-racist. It's a bit
>     performative, but
>      > sometimes it's important to set an example.
>      >
>      > So I think we should consider going through the renaming process
>     for TEI
>      > repos. There are probably some implications to doing that, broken
>     links
>      > being the first one that comes to mind. What do you all think?
>      >
>      > Hugh
>      >
>      > _______________________________________________
>      > Tei-council mailing list
>      > Tei-council@lists.tei-c.org <mailto:Tei-council@lists.tei-c.org>
>      > http://lists.lists.tei-c.org/mailman/listinfo/tei-council
>      >
>
>     --
>     -------------------------------------
>     Humanities Computing and Media Centre
>     University of Victoria
>     mholmes@uvic.ca <mailto:mholmes@uvic.ca>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Tei-council mailing list
>     Tei-council@lists.tei-c.org <mailto:Tei-council@lists.tei-c.org>
>     http://lists.lists.tei-c.org/mailman/listinfo/tei-council
>

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University of Maryland Honors College
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