title: Creating branches on an empty project in git
body: <p>Let's say I am about to implement 3 different features in 3 different files (fileA, fileB an fileC) for a new project of mine.</p>
  
  <p>I thought I'd just need to add my (currently empty) project to git:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git init
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and then create 3 different branches:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git branch file1_branch
  git branch file2_branch
  git branch file3_branch
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but this doesn't work:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>fatal: Not a valid object name: 'master'.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Why is this?</p>
  
  <p>Maybe the problem could be related that even the master branch wasn't created at this point? I tried doing a <code>git branch</code>. It yielded nothing.</p>
  
  <p>I then thought about doing an "empty" commit to oblige git to create the <code>master</code> branch:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git commit -m `initial_commit`
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but as I didn't add any files to the staging area it doesn't work. </p>
  
  <p>Keep in mind I'm just about to start my project, so at this point I don't have any files to add to the commit!</p>
  
  <p>How to solve this issue? Am I doing something wrong?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>