Thank you for filling out a Git bug report! Please answer the following questions to help us understand your issue. What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue) 1. create an empty directory in CLI: mkdir test_repo 2. convert it to a git directory: cd test_repo & git init 3. 'git status' will say you are "On branch master" 4. 'git branch', 'git branch --all', or 'git branch --list' - nothing will say the master branch exists. And per man pages definition the branch command displays existing branches. So the question is why 'git status' says "On branch master", but 'git branches' don't? 5. check on 'ls -la ./git/branches' - it's empty 6. check on 'ls -la ./git/refs/heads' - it's empty 7. check on 'cat ./git/HEAD' - it shows 'ref: refs/heads/master' - why? if we didn't create any commit, and no branch exists? What did you expect to happen? (Expected behavior) git status should not say "On branch master", cat ./git/HEAD should be empty. Or the master branch should be created in ./git/branches and the 'git branch' command should display it. What happened instead? (Actual behavior) Inconsistency between 'git status', 'git branch', ./git/branches and ./git/HEAD What's different between what you expected and what actually happened? Anything else you want to add: Please review the rest of the bug report below. You can delete any lines you don't wish to share. [System Info] git version: git version 2.41.0 cpu: x86_64 no commit associated with this build sizeof-long: 8 sizeof-size_t: 8 shell-path: /bin/sh uname: Linux 6.4.12-200.fc38.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Aug 23 17:46:49 UTC 2023 x86_64 compiler info: gnuc: 13.1 libc info: glibc: 2.37 $SHELL (typically, interactive shell): /bin/bash [Enabled Hooks]