Git 2.30 Released As More Projects Shift To "Main" As Their Default Branch Name

Git 2.30 is out today as the latest stable release update of this wildly-popular, distributed revision control system.

Earlier in 2020 the Git 2.28 release brought the support for a configurable/default branch name to replace the "master" usage that has been the default behavior up to this point. That configurable option has been working out well for those wanting to change the default Git branch from the likes of "master" to "main" or "default". Git itself has been working towards such a transition to the "main" name and with Git 2.30 are some updates around their internal tests to accommodate the eventual change.

Among the projects that have been shifting to use the "main" default branch name rather than the existing "master" are the likes of the LLVM project, Fedora's hosted repositories, Mesa, and many other that are planning to migrate or already migrated. Additional projects are expected to follow suit once GitHub rolls out its new features to enhance that workflow.

Git 2.30 also has a variety of other changes. The highlights for this release include:

- Adjusting Git's own tests so they handle fine when the default initial branch name is "main" as opposed to "master". This is all in preparation for Git's own default branch name change to main.

- Userdiff updates for PHP / Rust / CSS.

- Git archive now allows compression levels higher than 9 for .tar.gz output.

- Updated command line completion handling.

- Rewriting git bisect in C code is continuing.

- Many fixes throughout.

More details on the Git 2.30 changes via the release announcement.