Change default branch to `develop`

[EvoLandEco]

Do you think it would be a good idea to change the default branch from master to develop? IMO,

• this can avoid unintended PRs and commits to the master
• this saves us a few seconds every time we create a PR
• this will help us to enjoy the advantage of closing keywords

[richelbilderbeek]

We'll vote on it today :-)

[richelbilderbeek]

I would vote against this: usually master is for the regular user and develop for the developers. Making develop the default would mean that regular users (among others, e.g. my mom) need to switch to the master branch themselves. I thing regular users should not need to Google for git commands, hence I vote against.

This brings the voting to a tie :-/

[TheoPannetier]

I vote against, for the same reasons as Richel. The default branch is the one users see and download the software from; there should be absolutely no risk of it being broken and it should not have experimental features on.

But I agree with your motivations, it is unfortunate that Github doesn't suggest merging to develop by default despite this being the model used by the vast majority of projects, as far as I know.

[richelbilderbeek]

@EvoLandEco I conclude that this Issue has been dealt with. We've nicely discussed the pros and cons, voted democratically and decided that master remains the default branch. I hope you agree with the process and a re-vote in the future can be requested.

For now, let's close this Issue :-)

[EvoLandEco]

Yes, I understand your concerns, I raised this issue right after I figured out why my keywords didn't work at all. I was assuming that GitHub developers are well aware of the differences between master/main and develop, and the release function is the one for the users. But of course, I agree that it is better to drop this assumption, avoid to add costs for all the users/developers