[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,

-- 
Benoit Sigoure aka Tsuna
EPITA Research and Development Laboratory