trunk was the common name before git anyway. Why the move away? I've heard it's because git is more of a weird graph than the trunk+branch model of CVS. But if that's the reasoning, master is still a stupid name because it implies the same primacy as trunk. Why not just default or start or something?

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

I think master came from master record. It makes some sense, as all other branches would be derived from the master branch.

[–] bob_lemon@feddit.org 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

That would make sense for forks, not branches. Although to be fair, the word branch also doesn't make sense for branches (since those don't exactly merge back into the trunk).

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 16 hours ago

I think it can apply to the most general workflow with branches as well, where branches are used to develop features and then later merge them.

After all, any new branch is basically a "remaster" until merged back in, which is when the original master becomes the remaster.

Sure, the analogy isn't perfect because in music the original master isn't supposed to change – but the entire purpose of a version control system is to change the "master record", i.e. what's deployed to production.