Fatal error running status in new repo

I just noticed this when creating a new repo for a project.

$ mkdir tmp $ cd tmp $ git init Initialized empty shared Git repository in /home/jhe/projects/tmp/.git/ $ git status # On branch master # # Initial commit # warning: ignoring dangling symref HEAD. fatal: bad revision 'HEAD' nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track) $ echo $? 0 $ git --version git version 1.7.0

Seems a bit silly that "git status" should be issuing warnings, and fatal errors (especially when the exit code is still 0), when run before the first commit has been created in a brand new repository.

The warnings make sense if you know what's going on behind the scenes, but seem like the kind of thing that could scare someone new to git when they haven't actually done anything wrong at this point.