Why is "git branch" silent in new repositories?

Question

When you create a new repository and run git branch, it exits silently. For example:

$ mkdir /tmp/foo; cd /tmp/foo; git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/foo/.git/

$ git branch

Why doesn't the command provide any output, or show the master branch?

Answer 1

TL;DR

No branch heads exist yet.

Detailed Explanation

A Git repository has no branches until you make your first commit. A newly-initialized repository sets HEAD to refs/heads/master, but refs/heads/master won't exist or contain a commit pointer until after the first commit is made.

During a commit, Git dereferences the symbolic-ref HEAD to find the head of the current branch, and then updates that head with the commit hash supplied by git-commit-tree.

The end result is that git branch has nothing to report in a new repository. With no branch heads present, it simply terminates silently with an exit status of zero.

See Also

• git-branch(1)
• git-commit-tree(1)
• git-symbolic-ref(1).
• git-update-ref(1)
• gitcore-tutorial(7)

Answer 2

Note that a branch is simply a pointer to a commit.
Since an empty repo (with its empty tree) has no commit, you have no branch.

A first commit will create a branch named 'master', because HEAD references refs/heads/master.
Should you want to create a first commit on a different branch (than master), you would need to change the symbolic ref of HEAD first (as detailed in this thread):

git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/non-master 

And then make your first commit.

Answer 3

Yes, you first need to perform

$ git add .
$ git commit -m 'first commit'

commands.