FESCo (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee), responsible for the technical part of Fedora distribution development, approved proposal about stopping from using the name master in the git repositories of the project, as this word has recently been considered politically incorrect, reminiscent of slavery and is perceived as offensive to some community members. Removing the master name is expected to increase inclusiveness and attract new contributors to the project.
The default branch name in git repositories will be “main” instead of master. Package repositories such as src.fedoraproject.org/rpms will use the “rawhide” branch instead of “master”, also accessible via an additional symbolic link named “main”.
Renaming will be carried out in several stages. Initially, on January 5th, a guide will be posted for maintainers to change branches in
service pagure.io. On January 6, the following repositories will be switched to use the “main” branch by default:
- src.fedoraproject.org/flatpacks/*
- github.com/fedora-infra/*
- pagure.io:
- releng
- releng / *
- fedora-comps
- fedora-kickstarts li>
- fedora-infrastructure
- fedora-lorax-templates
- fedora-mediawikitheme
- fedora-packager
- fedora-infra / *
- infra-docs
- koji-fedmsg-plugin
- workstation-ostree-config
- pungi-fedora
On January 13th, the changes will be applied to the src.fedoraproject.org/* repositories. On the same day, the branch filters will be updated and changes to the ‘master’ branch will not be accepted. Additionally, a sym-ref will be configured between the ‘rawhide’ and ‘main’ branches for people who prefer to use the name ‘main’ instead of ‘rawhide’. In the pagure.io service, by default, new projects will be configured to use the ‘main’ branch. Corresponding changes will also be made to 17 Python scripts used to automate the build and maintain the distribution.
It is noteworthy that when discussing there were concerns about the validity of using the word ‘ rawhide ‘ for main branches of repositories packages, since the mention of skinning animals can offend the feelings of adherents of religions who consider cows as sacred animals.