Git borrowed the term “master” from BitKeeper, the proprietary tool the Linux kernel used before Git existed.
In BitKeeper, a “master repository” referred to the authoritative repository in a set of distributed clones. When Linus Torvalds created Git in 2005, he followed that naming convention and called the primary branch “master”.
Git borrowed the term “master” from BitKeeper, the proprietary tool the Linux kernel used before Git existed.
In BitKeeper, a “master repository” referred to the authoritative repository in a set of distributed clones. When Linus Torvalds created Git in 2005, he followed that naming convention and called the primary branch “master”.
Should have followed Subversion so we’d have “trunk” with the branches coming off it.