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My Git Knowledge
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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Just ran
git initin a brand new empty directory, and while it did create amasterbranch by default, it also printed out a very descriptive message explaining how you can change that branch name, how you can configure git to use something else by default, and other standards that are commonly used.Also, there's nothing saying your local branch name has to match the upstream. That's the beauty of git - you have the freedom to set it up pretty much however you want locally.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying, there is no one standard now. The stupid thing is all the problems that causes is mostly because there used to be one, and stuff written assuming
masterbranches are eternal.I've had a company that had some automation built on git but below GitLab that would not let you delete
masterbranches. Whenmainbecame a thing, they just started hard protecting those as well by name. It's because of regulatory, and they are very stingy about it.So when I created a few dozen empty deployment repos with
mainas the default, and then had to change it over tomasterso that it lined up nicer with the rest of the stuff, I've had a few dozen orphaned undeletable emptymainbranches laying around. A bit frustrating.That said, the whole thing is just that. A bit frustrating. If it makes some people feel better about themselves, so be it. I am blessed in life enough to take "a bit frustrating".
Yeah that's fair, I can see how that would be annoying for sure. I think that frustration stems more from company policy though, not necessarily the standard changing. And you know what they say, there's nothing certain in this world except for death, taxes, and standards changing
It is trash code for sure, but most of the world's code is trash, so we do have to accommodate trash code when we design stuff. That said, they do need to do this to comply with laws and make sure code doesn't get lost (it's finance), and this was the easy way to do it. Doing it better would have taken time and attention away from other stuff.
And standards do change, but they usually change to accommodate new features, or a new software product displaces an old one. I don't really know any tech standard that changed because of cultural reasons. Point is, change is a cost. It may be worth to pay the cost, but here the benefits were US cultural sentiments that most of the world doesn't care about.
And the stupid thing is that even when standards change, you are not usually labelled as culturally out of touch if you don't follow it. Most big orgs don't follow changes that they don't need to. Nobody calls you a bigot for running COBOL mainframes in 2023, but they might if you predominantly have
masterbranches.I guess my perspective is that some people I know were mildly annoyed before lunch about it one day two years ago, since nobody cares about US identity politics, with my personal opinion being if the US didn't fill up its for-profit prisons with black people who it then those prisons profit off of (just as an example), the word
masterwould not bite as hard, and the whole thing would be moot.