Merge pull request #1729 from noureddin/new-default-branch-name

Note that master is not always the default

Author: ben

book/01-introduction/sections/first-time-setup.asc

@@ -84,6 +84,7 @@ You may find, if you don't setup your editor like this, you get into a really co
 An example on a Windows system may include a prematurely terminated Git operation during a Git initiated edit.
 ====
 
+[[_default_branch]]
 ==== Your default branch name
 
 By default Git will create a branch called _master_ when you create a new repository with `git init`.

book/02-git-basics/sections/recording-changes.asc

@@ -36,6 +36,15 @@ Finally, the command tells you which branch you're on and informs you that it ha
 For now, that branch is always `master`, which is the default; you won't worry about it here.
 <<ch03-git-branching#ch03-git-branching>> will go over branches and references in detail.
 
+[NOTE]
+====
+GitHub changed the default branch name from `master` to `main` in mid-2020, and other Git hosts followed suit.
+So you may find that the default branch name in some newly created repositories is `main` and not `master`.
+In addition, the default branch name can be changed (as you have seen in <<ch01-getting-started#_default_branch>>), so you may see a different name for the default branch.
+
+However, Git itself still uses `master` as the default, so we will use it throughout the book.
+====
+
 Let's say you add a new file to your project, a simple `README` file.
 If the file didn't exist before, and you run `git status`, you see your untracked file like so: