LLVM developers discuss deprecating the word "master"

Developers of the LLVM project expressed a desire follow the example other projects and stop using the word "master" to identify the master repository. The change is presented as a demonstration that the LLVM community is inclusive and sensitive to issues that may cause discomfort to certain categories of participants.

Instead of "master", it is proposed to choose a neutral replacement, for example, "dev", "trunk", "main" or "default". It is noted that before the transition from SVN to Git, the main branch was called "trunk" and this name remains familiar to developers. At the same time, it is proposed to consider the issue of replacing the mentions of the terms whitelist/blacklist with allowlist/denylist. At the same time, renaming the main branch will require changes to the build scripts, settings for the continuous integration system and related scripts, but it is noted that these changes will be insignificant compared to the recently performed migration from SVN to Git.

Most participants debate, numbering more than 60 messages, were in favor of renaming. Offer including approved the and Chris Lattner, founder and chief architect of LLVM, but he advised not to rush, but to wait and see what happens initiative GitHub to stop using the default name "master" for master branches (to use the same terminology as in GitHub when renaming).

There was also some sarcasm in bringing the situation to the point of absurdity, which some were accepted seriously. Roman Lebedev (942 commit in LLVM) mentionedthat if we talk about inclusiveness, then we need to think about the appropriateness of using other words, for example, “work” and “job”, since in Russian “worker” sounds like “worker” or “worker”, and these words contain the combination “ slave", which translates as "slave".

Source: opennet.ru