Switch from 'master' to 'main' branch

[kripken]

Most of the other WebAssembly/ repos have done this already.

Any concerns? I can't think of any CI or other factors that could be broken by this, but maybe I'm missing something.

[fgmccabe]

Sure.

[dtig]

No concerns, though taking a quick look through the repositories there are quite a few repositories that still use master as the default branch. Perhaps we can use this issue for tracking?

All the new repositories use main as the default branch, but the older repositories will need to be renamed. The only thing that would be affected is folks may run into local repos being out of date after the rename, but that should be fairly straightforward to fix.

[rossberg]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is the context of this renaming, and why is it needed? (AFAICT, all the GH repos I've been contributing to use master.)

[fgmccabe]

If I Understand Correctly, this is part of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Admittedly, it is a very small part; but none-the-less a positive part.

[dtig]

The context here is to make the default naming conventions inclusive, see here for more detailed reading material, and supporting research. Github does this by default already(examples can be found in the newer proposals repositories), and has made the process of renaming quite seamless.

[rossberg]

I see, thanks!

[kripken]

Ok, sounds like there are no objections. Making this change requires one of the repo owners to go to Settings->Branches->Default Branch and click the "Rename branch" icon (a pen). (edit: I had this wrong before)

I'm not sure who is a repo owner here, but perhaps @dschuff or @dtig ?

[dtig]

The design repository has now been renamed, this re-targets any open PRs, but does not update local environments. Any local branches will have to be updated to pull from the main branch.

To switch to using main in an existing local checkout -

• git branch -m master main
• git fetch origin
• git branch -u origin/main main
• git remote set-head origin -a

Update existing branches to use main as the parent branch -

• git branch -u origin/main <branch>

I'm keeping this issue open for tracking as we rename other repositories.

[kripken]

Thanks @dtig !

[dtig]

The default branch for several proposal repositories has been changed to main. There are some proposals that haven't been renamed yet as they are under active development, cc'ing the champions of the proposals to rename the branches in the way they find least disruptive. Happy to help too, so feel free to reach out if there are any questions or concerns.

cc: @rossberg, @aardappel, @aheejin, @conrad-watt, @yuri91, @lukewagner, @penzn, @fgmccabe

[yuri91]

I just switched branch hinting from master to main.
Hopefully I didn't mess anything up.

[aheejin]

exception handling repo's default branch has been switched to main too.

[conrad-watt]

I don't appear to have permission to do this in the threads repo, possibly because I took over championship after the repo was created.

[dtig]

Thanks @aheejin and @yuri91. @conrad-watt Sorry about the permissions issue, should be fixed now.