error: Can't cherry-pick into empty head

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to understand why I'm getting the error as per subject.

The scenario is the following: I'm on the master branch (which contains several commits) and I would like to create a new empty branch (let's call it new-orphan) and cherry-pick only the commits related to a specific folder (let's call it my-folder) from the master branch.

So, I tried the following command sequence:

  master $ git checkout --orphan new-orphan
  new-orphan $ git rm --cached -r .
  new-orphan $ git clean -df

After confirming that I'm in a clean state (with "$ git status") I tried:

  new-orphan $ git rev-list --reverse master -- my-folder/ | git
cherry-pick --stdin

as suggested https://git-scm.com/docs/git-cherry-pick, but what I get is "error: Can't cherry-pick into empty head".

What I don't really understand is:

1) if I cherry-pick a single commit instead of multiple commits,
everything works fine:

  new-orphan $ git cherry-pick <some-commit-id>

2) if I commit something before trying the above command, everything works fine:

  new-orphan $ touch README
  new-orphan $ git add README
  new-orphan $ git commit -m "added README"
  new-orphan $ git rev-list --reverse master -- my-folder/ | git
cherry-pick --stdin

Can someone please help me understand this?

Thanks, Fabrizio