I think the repositories that are created on GitHub with a README.md file or any other file initially added using the web app (as shown in the two images below) uses the main branch as the default branch. If no file is chosen and Git Bash is used to upload files, the default is still master (as shown in the third pic).

👉 Repo with no files initially added:

👉 Repo with README.md added initially uses the main branch.

👉 Repos created locally are still using master as the default branch, so if the main branch is to be used, then a repo with the main branch as the default branch will have to be cloned or the default local branch in Git 2.28.0 will have to be changed using the command git config --global init.defaultBranch <branch_name> for new local repos created using git init.

So for new repos, I feel that these changes definitely can and should be made.

For existing repos, GitHub has adviced waiting until the end of this year.

For now, there are some workarounds and methods for existing repos like retarget_prs and Scott Hanselman's blog post.

As far as git_basics is concerned, most of the content is catered towards Git rather than GitHub and Git has not made any changes to the default branch yet. Git is in the process of making changes, the first of them being the introduction of --global init.defaultBranch <branch_name> to the git config command as said in the description of the 3rd image. Also, I think a lot of the users of git_basics are quite new to Git and all other resources are using master, so these changes will make it difficult for them to grasp things right now, in my opinion. That being said, a note informing people about this shift can be added for now and final changes can be made when things become more concrete and simpler to follow for absolute newbies.

Thoughts?

replace master by main. #47

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