Future of default branch naming

[pllim]

Do you have plans to rename the default branch here? I see that it is hardcoded in https://github.com/astropy/astropy/blob/0a29184ea1d5fdc2876e9dd3294c56e32287e0a5/azure-pipelines.yml#L11 . So if you change it, please open PR downstream. Thanks!

[ConorMacBride]

Would Azure Pipelines follow GitHub's redirect to the new default branch name, or would jobs fail for all downstream projects still using the old default name as a ref?

[Cadair]

I don't think it would, so I have no intention to change the default branch here as it would require patching every downstream project.

The only thing I can think of would be to maintain a "master" branch on this repo which is automatically synced with the default branch, so that not updated repositories would continue to work. If someone wanted to do this then I would be willing to test it out.

[Cadair]

I am going to close this as wont-fix due to the compatibility issues it would cause.

[ConorMacBride]

The Azure docs says it'll use the default branch if a ref isn't specified so we could probably remove the recommendation in the docs to specify a ref.

I'd be happy to look into the separate branch option. Instead of syncing, it should be possible to create templates in a "master" branch that call the templates in a default "main" branch we could just copy the current tox and publish templates to a new "master" branch and append a job to them to show a deprecation warning in the azure gui saying that people need to remove the ref or update it to "main" to receive updates.

[Cadair]

The Azure docs says it'll use the default branch if a ref isn't specified so we could probably remove the recommendation in the docs to specify a ref.

👍 Seems sensible.

show a deprecation warning in the azure gui saying that people need to remove the ref or update it to "main" to receive updates

This concerns me a little, because I am not sure if people would see them. I wonder if we could generate something a little more visible.

[Cadair]

If we were to do this, we should really use some of the astropy batch PR/issue scripts to try and fix / warn all the 60 repos using these templates.

[pllim]

Re: batch PR -- Theoretically possible but if you want to do due diligence, someone still needs to vet the PR diffs after they are open.