Branch names for KF5 & KF6 variants
Open, Needs TriagePublic

Description

So far "master" has been used. With the parallel development of KF5 & KF6 after branching, at least one new name has to be found, either for the KF5 one or the KF6 one.

One idea: using "main" for the KF6 branch.

This would allow to start picking up that branch name that has become the usual branch in some other developer bubbles, when a new name has to be introduced anyway, with all the adaption work needed. "main" as branch name for Qt6/KF6 code variant might be also used in non-KF repos then, for consistent branch naming across KDE repos.

kossebau created this task.Nov 25 2022, 1:19 PM
kossebau added a subscriber: vkrause.

Personally I don't see the advantage of switching the default branch name to "main", and doing so would break many people's scripts and automation tooling.

Not a formal objection or attempt to veto the proposal though, just my perspective.

switching the default branch name to "main"

"Default" as in?

Once some projects start to have Qt5 and Qt6 only branches, what is the "default"? And not all projects will switch to Qt6/KF6 at the same time. So there has to be some naming pattern anyway. Because otherwise in case that some "master" branches require Qt5/KF5, while others require Qt6/KF6 only (because they dropped or never had Qt5 support), things will not blend. And "master" has no related meaning then.

When KDE projects turned to Qt5/KF5 that development branch was named "frameworks" (IIRC). Now it could be "main" and then directly become the new leading development branch.

usta added a subscriber: usta.Nov 25 2022, 3:39 PM

I dont know if have any vote right but if i had my vote goes to "master"

In T16013#284330, @usta wrote:

I dont know if have any vote right but if i had my vote goes to "master"

Please for now stick to arguments, ideas, etc. Voting/decisions can be done afterwards.

I'd suggest to separate KF6 branching a possible default branch renaming.

The assumption for KF6 branching so far was that the KF5 based version gets branched off using the corresponding stable branch naming scheme (which only Frameworks doesn't have, so there we still need to determine a branch name), and the default branch ("master") becomes KF6-based. Yes, this means that "master" can have different meanings depending on the repository, but that isn't new, tooling in many places can handle that already (we just recently removed the metadata for that from the 4->5 transition).

Renaming the default branch has implications beyond that I think, and thus would further complicate the already likely initially messy KF6 branching.

vkrause moved this task from Needs Input to Done on the KF6 board.Feb 21 2023, 4:36 PM