Renaming ASPECT's default branch to 'main'

ASPECT
1

All,

As many of you know we decided to rename ASPECT’s default development branch from master to main and made this change during the virtual user meeting last week. We explained all the reasons for this change and the procedure in our keynote lecture that is now available here: January 19: Keynote1 - YouTube.

Because this change will require a small effort from every user who cloned ASPECT from our Github repository, I would like to repeat the instructions for how to make this change as painless and simple for everyone here. The full presentation slides including all background and instructions are available here: Keynote 1 - Renaming ASPECT main branch - Google Slides.

The renaming requires 2 changes from every user of an ASPECT git repository:

  1. Renaming the ‘master’ branch into ‘main’ on your Github fork of ASPECT: You will receive a popup notification on Github the next time you visit your repository with instructions for how to do this. Alternatively instructions are provided here: Renaming a branch - GitHub Docs.

  2. Performing the same change inside every local clone of ASPECT. General instructions are available here: Renaming a branch - GitHub Docs. But specifically, execute the following commands inside your git repository (assuming master is the current name of your default branch, and origin is the remote locations you want to set as the default remote for this branch):

git branch -m master main
git fetch origin
git branch -u origin/main main
git remote set-head origin -a

That’s it, you successfully renamed the branch. In future git commands simply replace every reference to master with main and all commands should work as before. If you encounter problems or some of these instructions are not clear, check the keynote talk linked above, or leave us a comment in this forum thread and we will be happy to help you out.

Thanks,
Rene on behalf of all maintainers