Documentation Link

https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/devel/development_workflow.html#workflow-summary

Problem

Our dev guide has advice to consider deleting your main branch, with a link to this pretty old page. I see two problems with the linked advice

• It describes master instead of main, and it may not be obvious for someone who is new to open source that that is just an old name for the same thing. Also there were good EDI reasons why master was dropped.

• the instructions for deleting the branch and setting up placeholder as your new default branch are fairly involved. These days you can just rename your branch within GitHub, which I think will have the same practical effect with less effort.

Suggested improvement

I see two options

1. just remove the advice about deleting the main branch (but retain the advice to not develop with it).

2. remove the advice about deleting the branch, but add some advice to rename it instead. I think this would fit better in the setting up instructions as you’d want to do it before you clone.

I have a slight preference for 2, but I think that’s just because my default branch is placeholder, having followed gitwash in the past. I’m not sure I have a strong argument that it’s better to rename than to leave it as main.