Re: Rename "master" branch to "main"?

[Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org>]

On 20 Jan 2021 08:49, Carlos O'Donell via Libc-alpha wrote:
> Having said that, I don't know how to do
> a redirect to keep old branches working (though I've seen it done in
> Fedora when we wholesale moved from /foo to /rpms/foo).

what branches are you thinking of ?  the old release branches ?  tbh, i
think we should just look forward.  lets focus on refs/heads/master ->
refs/heads/main.  changing that branch requires updating hooks and such,
but no other branches should break.

then for release branches, new ones will use main instead of master from
the very start.  nothing will break as they're all new refs.  people might
have to update their scripts to work with the new releases, but they have
to do that anyways to pull the upgrade.  existing stuff won't break.

so much like we aren't going to go through the git history and rewrite
all references to "master", leave the old branches alone as well.  if
anything, it stands out as "there was a mistake and we rectified it".
as we generate new branches, they'll slowly age out of the default list
of active branches.

if you really really want to rename those old branches, it can be done
after we clean up ToT and stop generating new bad branches ... let's
not hold back all progress because the long legacy tail is hard :).
-mike