[Misfeature] cloning without configuration fails and returns 0

Hi, on a new machine I have access to, I fetched tonight's git master (git version 1.5.3.7.g9758e) and installed it on my account in order to clone one of my projects. I did not setup anything in my git config and stumbled on the following misfeature:

---------------------------------------------------------------------- $ git clone ssh://login@host/~/path/git/project/.git project Initialized empty Git repository in /home/me/git/project/.git/ Password: remote: Counting objects: 609, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (465/465), done. remote: Total 609 (delta 267), reused 462 (delta 134) Receiving objects: 100% (609/609), 1.56 MiB | 63 KiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (267/267), done.

*** Your name cannot be determined from your system services (gecos).

Run

   git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
   git config --global user.name "Your Name"

to set your account's default identity. Omit --global to set the identity only in this repository.

fatal: empty ident <me@fqdn> not allowed [last 11 lines repeated 3 times!] fatal: Not a valid object name HEAD ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Not only the same 11 lines of error message were printed 3 times, but also the command returned 0!

This is not user friendly at all. So I thought I'd point this out on this ML.

Cheers,