NOTICE: upcoming default branch name change

[jesse-ross]

The master branch of this repository will soon be renamed from master to main, as part of a coordinated change across the USGS-R and USGS-VIZLAB organizations. This is part of a broader effort across the git community to use more inclusive language. For instance, git, GitHub, and GitLab have all changed or are in the process of changing their default branch name.

We will make this change early in the week of January 10, 2022. The purpose of this issue is to give notification of the change and provide information on how to make it go smoothly.

If you wish to make the change yourself rather than wait for us to do it, it can either be done manually or through some convenience functions in the usethis package.

• [x] From your local version of the repository, change the remote branch name using usethis or the manual method.
• [ ] Verify that the local branches are changed as well (if using usethis) or change them yourselves (if using the manual method).
• [ ] If you have collaborators on this repository, give them a heads up by pointing them to this issue!
• [x] Search within your repository for "master" so that you can change references (e.g. URLs pointing to specific commit points of files) to point to "main" instead.
• [ ] When you are done, feel free to close this issue!

Using usethis

Note: usethis must be version 2.1.2 or higher

1. Run usethis::git_default_branch_rename()

The screen shot below shows the output of this command in addition to a few other commands. For more details see here.

Note that if you have not yet set up git credentials for HTTPS, you can do so by creating a GitHub PAT and using gitcreds::gitcreds_set() to register it with git.

Manual Method

1. Go to \<your repository> -> Settings -> Branches and edit the default branch from master to main.
2. All members must update their local settings to match this change. They can either do this with usethis::git_default_branch_rediscover() (see above) or else run the following:

   git config --global init.defaultBranch main
   git branch -m master main
   git fetch origin
   git branch -u origin/main main
   git remote set-head origin -a

[SimonTopp]

I think we're all good here! Thanks @jesse-ross!