Change the default branch from "master" to something else

[mislav]

Our team would prefer to change our default branch name away from "master", since "master" is a generally problematic term due to its association with slavery in some contexts. (We are aware that "master" as used in git does not necessarily have that connotation, but we do not want to nitpick about etymology here.)

We are considering one of these names for the default branch name: trunk, development, or main.

TODO:

• check our scripts/automation for whether master is hardcoded anywhere
• run the branch migration script (below)
• move branch protections from master to new branch
• modify docs to reference the new branch instead of master
• delete master branch
• instruct devs to update their local clones:

  git fetch origin --prune
  git checkout trunk
  git remote set-head origin trunk
  git branch -D master
  

Ref. desktop/desktop#6478

[mislav]

(Untested) script to change the default branch from the command-line using gh:

set -e

repo=cli/cli
newbranch=trunk
remote=origin

git fetch "$remote" master
git checkout -b "$newbranch" "${remote}/master" --no-track
git push -u "$remote" "$newbranch"
git remote set-head "$remote" "$newbranch"

# update the default branch
gh api -XPATCH "repos/${repo}" -f default_branch="$newbranch" >/dev/null

# update the base branch of all open pull requests
for num in `gh pr list -B master -L999 | awk '{print $1}'`; do
  gh api -XPATCH "repos/${repo}/pulls/${num}" -f base="$newbranch" >/dev/null
done

Ref. #909

[nerdneha]

Update! We'll be changing our default branch name to: trunk! 🥳

[tierninho]

Adding a small task for me to update the soon-to-be broken links in our issues as they would still point to master:

• Open current directory or given file in repo on github #706 Support for GitHub Secrets #441 Install from source instructions should list golang-13+ as required version. #433 and possibly: Generating manpages #900

[mislav]

This is done! The default branch is now trunk ✅