How will changing 'master' to 'main' affect manubot build?

[jaybee84]

jaybee84/ml-in-rd#62 (comment)

[agitter]

Cross-referencing #341, which has some discussion and links to the ml-in-rd repo that show how to change the branch from which manuscripts are deployed. Similar steps would be taken to deploy from main.

In terms of reconfiguring this rootstock repository to use main instead of master, my thoughts are that we may want to wait until GitHub implements its change so that our workflows and instructions are consistent with theirs. Recent news makes it sound like that change is coming soon but still in progress.

We would also need to provide additional instructions in SETUP.md for anyone merging upstream rootsock changes.

[jaybee84]

Thanks @agitter !

[dhimmel]

It looks like the master branch name is hardcoded in several places, especially in the CI scripts and SETUP. It won't be too hard to change this repo such that new manuscripts use a different default branch. Doing this in a way that is backwards compatible for existing manuscripts that already use master might be more challenging.

my thoughts are that we may want to wait until GitHub implements its change so that our workflows and instructions are consistent with theirs.

I agree. At least until GitHub provides more clarity on what the default branch name will be in the future... do we know main is what it will be? Hopefully, GitHub announces their plans ASAP so we can have a timeline on when we can roll this change out.

[dhimmel]

More info on GitHub's updates at https://github.com/github/renaming.

Also recent blog post GitHub Actions: Better support for alternative default branch names:

We have updated all of our starter workflows to use a new $default-branch macro rather than the previously hardcoded master. You can take advantage of this feature in your custom starter workflows as well.

We should look into using $default-branch such that we begin removing hardcoded references to master. Ideally, we can support a default branch of any name. At that point, we might be able to switch rootstock to main with minimal disruption.

Update: I think $default-branch is only for "workflow templates" and not actual workflows. Must confirm.

[dhimmel]

I just switched the default branch for manubot/manubot to main in dhimmel/manubot@0c2e5b2. But this is unrelated to the default branch used by rootstock.

[dhimmel]

Linking to sgkit-dev/sgkit-publication@4f723fa by @eric-czech.

Also noting commands to get the default git branch from actions/checkout#283 (comment) and https://dev.to/mindaugaslaganeckas/get-default-branch-name-1clo

[dhimmel]

The default branch for Rootsock has been switched to main in #399. From the updated SETUP.md:

On 2020-10-01, GitHub changed the default branch name for new repositories from master to main.
More information on GitHub's migration is available at github/renaming.

On 2020-12-10, Manubot updated the Rootstock default branch to main.
For existing manuscripts, the default branch will remain master,
unless manually switched to main.
Rootstock has been configured to run continuous integration on both main and master,
so existing manuscripts can, but are not required, to switch their default branch to main.

Upgrading to the latest Rootstock will change several READMEs links to main.
For manuscripts that do not plan to switch their default branch,
do not include these changes in the upgrade merge commit.

I'm going to upgrade some existing manuscripts to check everything is working. But absent any issues, users should be able to migrate existing manuscripts (after upgrading to the latest rootstock).

Updates:

• tweeted
• manubot/try-manubot@8cc6bd2
  readme conflicts in badge URLs were the one annoyance with the upgrade.