Re: Jargon and acronyms on this mailing list

On Mon, Sep 9, 2024 at 7:20 PM Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 9, 2024 at 1:03 PM Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> wrote:
> > I guess I could try to write code to migrate everything, but it would be
> > somewhat fragile. And what would we do if we ever decided to migrate
> > "master" to another name like "main"? I do at least have code ready for
> > that eventuality, but it would (currently) still keep the visible name
> > of HEAD.
>
> Personally, I think using HEAD to mean master is really confusing. In
> git, master is a branch name, and HEAD is the tip of some branch, or
> the random commit you've checked out that isn't even a branch. I know
> that's not how it worked in CVS, but CVS was a very long time ago.
>

Yeah, and it gets extra confusing when some of the error messages in git
explicitly talk about HEAD and that HEAD is something completely different
from our terminology.

If we rename master to main or devel or something, we'll have to
> adjust the way we speak again, but that's not a reason to keep using
> the wrong terminology for the way things are now.
>

Agreed in general. But also if we are going to end up making technical
changes to handle it, then if we're ever going to make the change master ->
main (or whatever), it would save work and pain to do the two at the same
time.

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/>
Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/ <http://www.redpill-linpro.com/>