Over the next 2 months, we’ll be migrating all our active Chef repositories default branch from master to main and all open Pull Requests will be moved to the new default branch.
What do contributors need to do?
The first time you visit a Chef repository on GitHub after the default branch has changed to main, you’ll be presented, with the following box.
This instructs git to move the master branch reference to main and set the remote tracking branch to main.
Conclusion
We’ve pined over the best verbiage to articulate our “why”, but this quote by Mislav Marohnić sums it up perfectly.
“The tech world did not invent the “master/slave” analogy for referring to a device that controls another device, but—like other industries—it adopted it for its accuracy. While accurate, the term is also problematic; it’s just that no one back then cared enough to examine it.”
As we all as a world and industry grow and learn, changes big and small will need to take place. This change is likely to cause some extra work in the short term but will make building software together more inclusive and welcoming in the long term. If you have any questions, feel free to join us in the #devrel channel of our Community Slack!