When I was a little boy, I had a master and slave. Luckily only inside the computer. I didn’t understand in the start why some parts were named that way. Many years after, we are talking about these things all around the world. And it’s good that we are.
Chance
An unimportant thing or not even in sight of one can hurt someone else a lot. And changing a thing that might look trivial and senseless for someone can show support and goodwill to many.
If we have even a slight chance to make the world kinder, better, more inclusive, and less offensive, let’s do it.
Change
That’s why we, like many others, are renaming branches of all Weblate repositories from master to main. The new name will also be used as default from now on. Please adjust your workflows to this change so you will continue to use and contribute to Weblate without any complications for you.
Big code-hosting sites like GitHub and GitLab have tools prepared for everyone to do these changes. So we are encouraging you to join the party of millions of projects if you already haven‘t.
What do you actually need to do to keep working with Weblate? Update your local clone as the branch name changed.
Run the following commands in your local clone to update the name of the default branch.
$ git branch -m master main
$ git fetch origin
$ git branch -u origin/main main
You should also update any local script or command that uses the name master to use the name main.
Respect
While we’re in the talk about respect, let’s also talk about privacy. Weblate was, is, and always will be respecting everyone, and their privacy, too. We have always been using essential cookies only, so while we are following huge communities like GitHub in renaming, we’ve been on this boat for a nice long sail :)
We hope you like the change. If you have any questions or ideas about this, let’s discuss them kindly in the community!
