bitkeeper

Someone else linked this historical document to show that the words in Git has indeed to do with a master-slave relationship: https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H... But as I said elsewhere, I do not care about that a lot. However, I do think those words are bad for other reasons because they do not illustrate the _actual_ role and relationships of branches in a VCS in a _good way_. If the master branch is not actually ruling over other branches, then it should be named something else, like "primary" as far as I am concerned.

> In any case, who made the association of the git branch "master" to slavery? It is absurd. BitKeeper, the VCS that preceded Git, used the terminology "master" and "slaves", so the association is not based on nothing: https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/0524ffb3f6f1...

Because the term Scrum Master wasn't derived from master/slave. Git's concept of a master branch was borrowed from BitKeeper which used master/slave terminology. https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H...

> Do you have any references supporting either that the protocol was more complicated than he demonstrated on stage BitKeeper itself is open source now and (an old version) of the protocol is documented at https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/p....

And in light of the history, https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper is funny on several levels.

BitKeeper used a seekable compressed file format for revision control data. It allowed a data-structure to be dynamically loaded on demand without needed to uncompress the whole file. A large empty memory buffer was allocated and then read permission was removed with mprotect(). Then a signal handler populate regions of that buffer with data from the compressed file on demand using the ability to seek to certain boundaries. This change achieved a 10X speedup on normal operations compared to the old code that used SCCS files. The compressed format stored data blocks in arbitrary order and then the index at the end of the file gave the data layout. Then allows write to the file without rewriting. BitKeeper itself only needed to append to the end of the file, but the format could support inserting data in the middle by only appending to the

> git repositories don't have "slave" branches, just a "master' as in template or origin That isn't true - master in git comes from master in BitKeeper which did have slave replicas. https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H... Not that there is anything wrong with slave in this context.

I was responding to your very general claim that "the connotation of master in the context of source control..." Here is the bitkeeper documentation[1] saying "we are then going to modify the file on both the master and slave repository and then merge the work." Safe to say that's in the context of source control? If you meant to say "based on how git works..." then sure, that's a more accurate claim. https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H...

Doesn't it come from Bitkeeper? See https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H... for master/slave terminology.

For those saying that "master" as used in git has nothing to do with master/slave: Git was made to replace bitkeeper which had (has?) the concepts of master/slave repositories: https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H... https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/... Edit: to those down-voting ... keep hitting the down arrow, maybe reality will go away and you won't be inconvenienced by it anymore.

Nope, it's mentioned right here: https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H...

Github inherited it from git, which inherited it from bitkeeper, the DVCS that Linux originally used and the one that inspired git. Bitkeeper used a master/slave architecture that git dropped. https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H...

Apparently git did inherit master from bitkeeper which had master and slave (replica) repositories. https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H...

>And my impression was that the usage was more similar to "master copy" than "master of the plantation". Evidently, this is a relic from bitkeeper which uses the "master/slave" terminology. https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper/blob/master/doc/H... https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2019-May/...