Renaming Cantera’s default branch#
There has been a growing awareness that the use of the name master for the
default branch in Git repositories perpetuates the use of the language of
oppression. It has also been shown
that the use of the term master in Git likely does stem from the harmful
master/slave metaphor, which it inherited from an earlier piece of software.
With the aim of upholding our commitment to fostering an open and welcoming
environment as outlined in our Code of Conduct,
specifically the standard of using welcoming and inclusive language, we have
changed the default branch name in Cantera to main, and recommend this
change to others for their forks and local repositories as well.
Adapting to this change will require a few small changes for anyone who has already checked out a copy of the Cantera source code using Git, and instructions which should help in most cases are provided below.
Updating your local repository and GitHub fork#
To change the name of Cantera’s default branch open a shell, navigate to the Cantera source directory, and run the following commands:
$ git fetch --all
$ git checkout master
$ git branch -m master main
$ git status
On branch main
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.
If your master branch isn’t up to date with its upstream, you will want to fix
that first using your preferred workflow to synchronize the two branches. If
you have made any local changes to the master branch, you should create a
feature branch to avoid losing any changes.
Next, we want to update the link between your main branch and the remote
repository (here, origin). You can check whether this remote is the main
Cantera repository or your fork on GitHub (or a different source) by running the
command:
$ git remote --verbose
origin git@github.com:cantera/cantera.git (fetch)
origin git@github.com:cantera/cantera.git (push)
myfork git@github.com:your_username/cantera.git (fetch)
myfork git@github.com:your_username/cantera.git (push)
Case 1: tracked remote is Cantera/cantera#
If the remote being tracked (in this example, origin) is the main Cantera
repository, that is, Cantera/cantera.git, then you can set the main branch
of Cantera/cantera as the upstream for your main branch:
$ git branch --unset-upstream
$ git branch -u origin/main
$ git fetch
$ git rebase origin/main
Then, you can push the updated main branch to your fork (in this example,
myfork) as well:
$ git push main myfork
Case 2: tracked remote is your fork#
If the remote listed is your fork of Cantera, then you may want to rename the
branch on your fork as well. If the remote name for your fork is myfork, this
can be changed by running:
$ git push -u myfork main
Deleting the old branch from your fork#
Once you have pushed the new main branch to your fork, visit the GitHub
website for your fork, go to Settings, then Branches, then
Default Branch, and set the default branch to main.
Once you make sure that the main branch shows any recent commits that you
expect to see, you can delete the old branch from your fork:
$ git push origin --delete master
If you get an error message that says
! [remote rejected] master (refusing to delete the current branch: refs/heads/master)`
this suggests that you haven’t successfully changed the default branch on GitHub.