From ‘Master’ to ‘Main’: The Meaning Behind Git’s Naming Shift

                            

Git changed its default branch name from master to main due to concerns about inclusivity and to remove references to terms with problematic historical connotations. The term master has been associated with slavery, and many tech communities sought to use more neutral and inclusive language.

Reason for the Change:

  1. Inclusivity & Sensitivity- Many organizations aimed to remove racially charged terminology from software development.
  2. Consistency Across Communities- Other projects and platforms, such as Github, Gitlab, and software frameworks, also made similar changes.
  3. Modern Naming Conventions- main is a cleaner and more intuitive name, as it represents the primary branch of a repository.

Interesting Facts — 

  1. It wasn’t originally about slavery — The term Git did not originate from the master/slave concept used in computing. It likely came from Bitkeeper, a version control system that Git was inspired by, where master referred to the main branch.
  2. The change was community-driven — The push for renaming wasn’t enforced by Git’s core maintainers alone. Instead, it was heavily influenced by discussions in the open-source community, particularly after the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum in 2020. Many projects, including Django, Python, and Linux, also made similar terminology changes.
  3. It wasn’t a universal change — Not all repositories switched to main. Some projects opted for trunk, default or even other custom names, depending on their workflows.
  4. Git led the charge — Github was the first major platform to default to main in new repositories. Before that, developers have to manually rename their default branch. They even provided tools to help rename existing branches easily.
  5. It sparked a larger inclusive language movement — Following Git’s change, other tech communities updated terms to be more inclusive:
Blacklist/Whitelist → Blocklist/Allowlist
Slave/Master → Primary/Replica or Leader/Follower

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