How do I move the contents of my master branch to a new Git branch?

I've been making some vast changes on the master branch of my Git r开发者_开发知识库epository. I'm pretty new to Git and so I'm wondering:

How can I move my current master branch to a new branch and recreate my master branch from scratch for a particular folder of files?

As an example, I have another folder, like new_stuff, that contains the new files to be added to the master branch, and that old master is a new branch named old_master.

Within the directory of the repository, in the command line type the following:

git branch -m master old_master
git branch master

This should be enough :)

Use git branch -m master old_master to rename master to something else. Then do something like git checkout -b master HEAD~2 to create the new master as per your needs ( in this case till the 2nd commit from previous HEAD ) Now add / replace the folder new_stuff and commit in master

git checkout master; git reset --hard f1eb786

worked fine for me and seems less intrusive than deleting master temporarily.