Hiatus for Branch Renaming Working Group

Owned by Jeremy Friesen
Last updated: Sept 17, 2020 by Lynette Rayle
2 min read



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Quick Status Update

In July of 2020, we chartered the Samvera Branch Renaming Working Group. We had several deliverables, most importantly an analysis of the impact of changing branch names and documentation/automation on how to make those changes.

What We’ve Done

To date, we’ve:

Github’s Ongoing Work

We learned about the following work from Github:


On October 1, 2020, any new repositories you create will use main as the default branch, instead of master. This change does not impact any of your existing repositories: existing repositories will continue to have the same default branch they have now. (see notes)
…
By the end of the year, we'll make it seamless for existing repositories to rename their default branch. When you rename the branch, we’ll retarget your open PRs and draft releases, move your branch protection policies, and more - all automatically. And, we’re also looking into redirecting users who git fetch or git clone the old branch name to the new branch name (with a warning and instructions to update their local clone), so it’s easy for your contributors to move. (see notes)

Our New Plan

With Github’s planned work and our analysis of potential impact, the working group plans to go on hiatus until the beginning of 2021. With Github taking an active role, we think they will be mitigating most of the potential negative impacts that could occur in renaming an often assumptive branch name. We also think this will greatly reduce any necessary effort amongst the limited organizational resources.

As chair, Kate Lynch (and Jeremy Friesen will be her back-up) will reconvene the group. We understand that this may mean some members will not be available for that next stage of the working group. But we will figure it out.