Development workflow changes made with the release of v3.2

[Julusian]

Coinciding with the release of v3.2, we intend to do some git branch reshuffling.

The plan

• rename master to main, to match current git recommendations for branch naming
• move development of beta releases to the main branch
• remove the then unused beta branch

Impact to users

This will only impact anyone running companion from source.

Once the change has been made, you will need to update your local clone to be using the correct branch. Subscribe to notifications on the right to be notified by github once the change has been made (this issue will be closed).

Detailed steps on what you will need to do to your clone will be provided closer to when the changes are made.

Why?

We find that contributors don't know what branch to target with a PR, as github defaults to targetting the default branch (currently master, the default will become main).
Additionally, current development is a bit hidden away on a branch, which makes it harder to see what is happening without knowing where to look.
We already have these stable-3.1 and similar branches where releases are prepared, with master being used as a marker to the latest release. But this can be discovered either on the website, looking at the git tags, or the github releases.

From what I remember, development was moved to beta from master because of concern about companionpi users updating with a git pull and pulling in whatever was in master. But the images havent worked this way since well before 3.0, and it is no longer recommended to run from source outside of development.

By not using the default branch, we are missing out on some nice github functionality too, like issues not being closed when merging linked PRs, and dependabot only being able to open security fix PRs for the default branch.

[Julusian]

For updating your local clone of this, if you are on the master or beta branch already you can run git pull followed by git checkout main to switch. You should then run git branch -D master or git branch -D beta to delete the old unused branch.

If you are using your own branch, then continue as usual, and you can pull in changes from main instead of beta like you usually do

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GitHub recommends the following:

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