# blog // ~ben

a blog about tildes and other things

### default branch name

June 16, 2020 — ~ben

changing git's default branch name has come up recently as an easy action we can take to update our language and remove harmful ideas from our daily usage.

i'm concerned that this effort to change the language used is ultimately a symbolic gesture to avoid scrutiny into actual change (notably github's push for this change and continued contracts with ICE).

however, it's an easy change to make.

let's have a look at how to change it for new repos:

    mkdir -p ~/.config/git/template
    echo "ref: refs/head/main" ~/.config/git/template/HEAD
    git config --global init.templateDir ~/.config/git/template

note that you can put this template dir anywhere you like.

you can also set this system-wide (not just for your user) in /usr/share, but note that this might get overriden by package updates.

    echo "ref: refs/head/main" | sudo tee /usr/share/git-core/templates/HEAD

the next time you `git init`, you'll be on a branch named main.

to change an existing repo, you can use the `-m` switch of `git-branch`:

    git checkout master
    git branch -m master main

push with `-u` to your remote if needed and update the default branch in the repo settings in the hosting platform of choice.

it's a relatively easy change, but don't kid yourself that it makes any real impact. go protest, donate and sign petitions, and get out there to fix the actual problems.

tags: git, linux, dev

### phoenix

February 26, 2018 — ~ben

inspired by oodsnet, (and my pull request to add darkmode), i started to create my own tilde.team fork (now forum.tilde.team).

the first step was to switch out the css to the tilde.team standard and update the classes for bootstrap. once i got it going and integrated with the tilde.team linux auth service, i asked other tildeans for input and suggestions.

~micaiah was interested in helping, but also wanted to learn a new language and/or framework, so we decided to start over, recreating the entire forum with elixir/phoenix. we'd discussed elixir previously, but never had a convincing use case to force us to learn it.

the project is live, with the source code on github.

the thing that i'm most impressed with is the speed of the erlang runtime :D

check out these response times. sub-millisecond!?!?!

give it a look, and join the tilde.team if you want to come hang out!

tags: internet, dev