renaming

Guidance for changing the default branch name for GitHub repositories

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16Mentions

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What it is

Guidance for changing the default branch name for GitHub repositories

GitHub

Where it is used

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 11:23:53 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year16 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2020-07-17 19:06:33 UTC to 2025-11-24 07:25:20 UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

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Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Submissions	Comments
2020	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	9	6	3
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	0	2
2022	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	0	2
2023	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	0	1
2024	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0	0
2025	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	0	2

What Hacker News says

2 sources

sequoia·Mar 17, 2021

Another potential issue with a change like this, for the reason that they give for doing it, is that it may communicate an inaccurate picture of what black people care about to non-black people. "Oh wow, black people are offended by and 'hurt by'[0] the use of this term. I didn't know this would make them feel hurt!" Articles like this clarify that at least some black people in fact do not feel "hurt by" this use of this term. I'm Jewish, if someone said "we have to take all the swastika imagery off this Hindu graphic because it will offend and hurt Jews," that would bother me. I'm not offended, much less hurt, by seeing a swastika in a cultural context unconnected to Naziism. To suggest most Jews would be "hurt" by this paints an inaccurate and extremely unflattering picture of my own resiliency and ability to contextualize words and ima

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gery. I can't speak for black folks but I would be surprised if some didn't feel similarly about being informed that reading the word "master" would or should offend and hurt them. 0: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2020/jun/23/gitbranchname/ (this is the rationale linked to by github[1]) 1: https://github.com/github/renaming

In GitHub, fuck your name change

mythz·Mar 17, 2021

Well 'main' is a more intuitive & UX friendly name than 'master' which new devs are going to intuitively relate to as it's commonly used to refer to the 'main thing', e.g. main road, main course, etc. I can't recall the last time I used 'Master' as a synonym to 'main' outside of technology (as a Redis Client author I still deal with Master nomenclature a bit). Can only think of 'Masters degree' but that has to do with Mastery knowledge rather than 'Master copy'. The only other usages of 'Master' I can think of (from TV & Films) is basically what they're trying to move away from. As a library author I often deprecate & rename new APIs when I can think of (or have been proposed) a more appropriate and a descriptive name to replace a misleading name. I put a lot of weight into the name of symbols as it basically has the largest bearing in un

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derstanding its functionality & purpose. This is effectively what GitHub is doing, deprecating 'master' in favor of 'main' for new repos, which I don't see a problem with as it's looking pretty clear that all new technology is moving away from master/slave terminology - I don't see why Software needs to be forced to use their old legacy names forever if they're able to deprecate it and move to new more appropriate naming without immediate breaking changes. This change hasn't broken any of my 100+ existing repos, GitHub is only changing the default branch to 'main' for new repos & have implemented a bunch of work behind the scenes to reduce the friction for orgs & users who also wish to rename their existing mater branches [1]. I don't understand the hate this effort to more modern & inclusive naming is inciting, if you want to criticize GitHub for their lack of action in other areas, criticize that instead. [1] https://github.com/github/renaming#renaming-existing-branche...

In GitHub, fuck your name change