### Problem to solve The default initial branch name when using git is `master`. This has raised eyebrows among some. Git itself does have support for changing the default name of the initial branch to be something else, and there isn't consensus on the "best" default name anyway. We have tended to use `master` for our own projects, but I'm accustomed to seeing Git projects where the default branch is called `develop`, which makes a lot of sense when (as in Git Flow or GitLab Flow), release branches are made off it. The tweet mentions the name `release` as a potential option. It's not something I've seen before, but is a reasonable name for a rolling-release project. Mercurial calls the default initial branch... well, `default`. GitLab is currently fairly opinionated about the default initial branch name, despite this diversity of preferences - in most situations, it will create a new project with a `master` branch, or configured for the first new branch to be `master`, without any user input, and without providing any choice to the user. ### Intended users * [Delaney (Development Team Lead)](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/roles-personas/#delaney-development-team-lead) * [Sasha (Software Developer)](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/roles-personas/#sasha-software-developer) * [Rachel (Release Manager)](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/product-marketing/roles-personas/#rachel-release-manager) ### User experience goal Freedom of choice for new projects ### Proposal When using any of these project creation options:  If the initial branch name to be used isn't **clear** from the context, then we should prompt the user to choose from a list of standard options, also permitting free-form entry. The default could continue to be `master`, since that has most interoperability at the moment, or we could consider making it group-level configurable, which would be handy for organisations to express a particular standard (say, they have decided to call the default initial branch `develop` across their organisation). The default branch to use is clear from context when importing an already-existing repository, whether from a GitLab export or third-party repo, since that specifies the default branch to use. Creating a new empty repository, one with a README, or creating a new repository from a template, all leave the question open. ### Further details Naming is hard :sweat_smile:. This issue is triggered from BLM, but `default`, `develop`, etc, *do* predate that. Whether `master` is an appropriate term in this context or not is probably best taken up at the git-project-level, but even if git decided to change their default to `default`, to match mercurial, as a consequence, people would still want to call their default branch `develop` in some cases. ### Is this a cross-stage feature? To an extent, this is ~"group::source code" , but ~"devops::manage" are responsible for project templates, I believe. It doesn't *require* any change to project templates themselves; they will all have the `master` branch in their bundles, but we can change it in a post-export step. We *could* go through and rename the default in all of them to `default`, if we felt like it. ### Links / references