Branching is "Save as..."

Branches are like "Save as..." on a directory. Best of all:

• Easily merge changes with the original (changes tracked and never applied twice)
• No wasted space (common files only stored once)

Why branch? Consider the utility of "Save as..." for regular files: you tinker with multiple possibilities while keeping the original safe. Git enables this for directories, with the power to merge. (In practice, svn is like a single shared drive, where you can only revert to one backup).

To add new branch master

git checkout -b master

This will create a new branch and switch to it.

Add all files:

git add .

Commit added files to master:

git commit -m "first commit"