> I would discourage the use of unconventional names for your branches, just because it creates more confusion
trunk has been the conventional name for the trunk branch of version control systems longer than anything else. "Child branches are branches that have a parent; a branch without a parent is referred to as the trunk or the mainline." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_(version_control)
git provides a way to determine which branch is the trunk, which it calls the default. Software which tries to guess at this is already broken, and for software which does it correctly, the name itself is completely irrelevant.
> It is a good metaphor in fact.
I disagree. In databases, for one example, what was conventionally called the slave is a replica. Is a slave a replica of his master? No, that's absurd. There are contexts in which one part of the system controls things, and the other is purely responsive or helpful, and I will grant you that in those cases, master/slave is a coherent metaphor, but the word "servant" can be used without loss of expressive power, and I see adequate reason to prefer that usage. In most cases where master/slave is used, master/replica or primary/secondary are in fact clearer than master/servant.
> The trouble with all of this is, language policing is not primarily about the words. We won't be rid of the language police after making the suggested changes.
Well yes, of course, we agree vigorously on this. I ask you: how does one grant these control freaks the least possible power? Clearly bowing to their every whim is a losing approach: if someone wants to pick a fight with me about the use of the term "blacklist", very well, they'll get their fight, because I won't stop.
But making a point of using terminology just because they don't like it is granting them a certain power as well, through the very act of rebellion. I genuinely think trunk is the best term for a trunk branch, so I use it. If you think master is better, I will disagree, and say no, trunk is better! But I won't call it offensive, that's just silly.
>Well yes, of course, we agree vigorously on this. I ask you: how does one grant these control freaks the least possible power? Clearly bowing to their every whim is a losing approach: if someone wants to pick a fight with me about the use of the term "blacklist", very well, they'll get their fight, because I won't stop.
I've been wondering about this myself. It seems to be part of a communist-adjacent power grab. The objective is to install useful idiots in all the right places so certain people can use fear to keep others in line, and ultimately advance more ambitious agendas of oppression. I'm still doing research on this subject. I just found a blog today at https://newdiscourses.com that seems dedicated to fighting this fight. It's relatively high-IQ stuff.
Anyway I agree that "trunk" is a better name than "master" or "main" for a new version control system, at least if it uses "branch" terminology. But git has been established for many years and we are only talking about an inconvenient change because of activists. Simply ignoring the activists and continuing as usual is not "granting them power"... Unless you are making a change away from something else over to "master" naming lol.
Unfortunately, there is no consistent meaning for what the master/main branch actually is out in the wild. It could be the stable branch or it could be the development branch, or it could be an old ref retained out of fear by someone who decided to jump on the renaming bandwagon. But I think for developer-centric projects, master is the stable dev branch. For user-centric project, it is often the last stable release branch. Both of these make sense.
trunk has been the conventional name for the trunk branch of version control systems longer than anything else. "Child branches are branches that have a parent; a branch without a parent is referred to as the trunk or the mainline." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_(version_control)
git provides a way to determine which branch is the trunk, which it calls the default. Software which tries to guess at this is already broken, and for software which does it correctly, the name itself is completely irrelevant.
> It is a good metaphor in fact.
I disagree. In databases, for one example, what was conventionally called the slave is a replica. Is a slave a replica of his master? No, that's absurd. There are contexts in which one part of the system controls things, and the other is purely responsive or helpful, and I will grant you that in those cases, master/slave is a coherent metaphor, but the word "servant" can be used without loss of expressive power, and I see adequate reason to prefer that usage. In most cases where master/slave is used, master/replica or primary/secondary are in fact clearer than master/servant.
> The trouble with all of this is, language policing is not primarily about the words. We won't be rid of the language police after making the suggested changes.
Well yes, of course, we agree vigorously on this. I ask you: how does one grant these control freaks the least possible power? Clearly bowing to their every whim is a losing approach: if someone wants to pick a fight with me about the use of the term "blacklist", very well, they'll get their fight, because I won't stop.
But making a point of using terminology just because they don't like it is granting them a certain power as well, through the very act of rebellion. I genuinely think trunk is the best term for a trunk branch, so I use it. If you think master is better, I will disagree, and say no, trunk is better! But I won't call it offensive, that's just silly.