# More inclusive branch names

**URL:** <https://forum.canton.network/t/more-inclusive-branch-names/1772>\
**Category:** Announcements\
**Created:** [December 11, 2020, 11:55am UTC](https://forum.canton.network/t/more-inclusive-branch-names/1772 "2020-12-11T11:55:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Gary\_Verhaegen](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.canton.network/gary_verhaegen/32/81_2.png) [@Gary\_Verhaegen](https://forum.canton.network/u/Gary_Verhaegen)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 11:55am UTC](https://forum.canton.network/t/more-inclusive-branch-names/1772/1 "2020-12-11T11:55:20Z")

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**We aim to make the DAML community the most inclusive, friendly, and fun place we can, and that can mean breaking with conventions that no longer seem appropriate.**

The naming of our default branch `master`, while very common in the industry, can be seen as offensive to some of our intended audience. Therefore, we have decided to start moving all of our repostories’ default branch names from the historically-charged `master` to the more accurate `main` label. Like all things naming-related in the computing world, this is unfortunately not an easy change to implement, so it will take some time to get all of our repositories up to date.

The most tricky repository is the DAML Connect one ([digital-asset/daml](http://github.com/digital-asset/daml)), which requires a substantial amount of coordination with other systems. For this reason, the change on that repository has been scheduled for December 26th, when we expect little activity.

Other repositories will be updated in a more ad-hoc fashion. Please bear with us through this transition and contact us if it generates any issue on your part.

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**Author:** ![anthony](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.canton.network/anthony/32/419_2.png) [@anthony](https://forum.canton.network/u/anthony)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 1:40pm UTC](https://forum.canton.network/t/more-inclusive-branch-names/1772/2 "2020-12-11T13:40:22Z")

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Pinned globally on December 11, 2020, 1:40pm UTC



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**Author:** ![rps](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.canton.network/rps/32/5622_2.png) [@rps](https://forum.canton.network/u/rps)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2020, 2:01pm UTC](https://forum.canton.network/t/more-inclusive-branch-names/1772/3 "2020-12-11T14:01:55Z")

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Thanks for the update Gary!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Gary\_Verhaegen](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.canton.network/gary_verhaegen/32/81_2.png) [@Gary\_Verhaegen](https://forum.canton.network/u/Gary_Verhaegen)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2020, 3:25pm UTC](https://forum.canton.network/t/more-inclusive-branch-names/1772/4 "2020-12-27T15:25:36Z")

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The switch has been made and as far as I can tell, everything went according to plan. I’ll keep an eye on things for the next few days, but please reach out if you notice anything not working or if this seems to be causing any issue for you.

If you have a local checkout of the [`daml`](https://github.com/digital-asset/daml) repo, you can update it to work with `main` instead of `master` by running the following commands:

```bash
    git checkout master
    git branch -m master main
    git fetch
    git branch --unset-upstream
    git branch -u origin/main
    git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD refs/remotes/origin/main

```

As a somewhat related note, if you want to configure your machine to use `main` instead of `master` as the default branch for new repos you create (`git init`), you can run:

```bash
git config --global init.defaultBranch main

```