git-gui clone differs from command line

After much mis-directed research, I finally figured out that cloning a repo (ssh://) with git-gui doesn't work exactly like 'git clone' from the command line. The main difference is that 'git pull' doesn't work on master. I get the error below. Is that intentional, or are we doing something wrong?

 From ssh://blr@cvs2/var/git/iv
 = [up to date]      master     -> origin/master
 = [up to date]      mbn/xtol   -> origin/mbn/xtol
 = [up to date]      sprint2    -> origin/sprint2
 = [up to date]      sprint3    -> origin/sprint3
 = [up to date]      sprint4    -> origin/sprint4
 = [up to date]      xtol       -> origin/xtol
You asked me to pull without telling me which branch you
want to merge with, and 'branch.master.merge' in
your configuration file does not tell me either.  Please
name which branch you want to merge on the command line and
try again (e.g. 'git pull <repository> <refspec>').
See git-pull(1) for details on the refspec.

If you often merge with the same branch, you may want to configure the following variables in your configuration file:

    branch.master.remote = <nickname>
    branch.master.merge = <remote-ref>
    remote.<nickname>.url = <url>
    remote.<nickname>.fetch = <refspec>

See git-config(1) for details.