Branch management, merging, conflicts

A "branch" is one of several histories of the project
Each programmer works on her own branch
In a single directory a programmer usually hosts many branches
No branch makes any reference to other branches

Branches are only compared when needed
Every branch is independent, but when merging
There is no such thing as a main branch, like in SVN
Actually, the concept of trunk is not applicable at all

Git only merges local branches or external patches
Everything must be already committed
No conflict can ever lead to information loss

We have tools to move branches or change past history
git rebase
git rebase -i
git commit --amend