Incorrect behavior / messages on empty directory

[VanNostrand]

I created an empty directory that was supposed to contain a git repo but instead of git init I typed git flow init instead.
git-flow-next printed the following text:

$ git flow init
Found existing git-flow-avh configuration, importing...
Successfully imported git-flow-avh configuration
Git flow has been initialized

But... a really empty directory can't have an existing git-flow-avh config and whatever is said to have been initialized didn't happen, because the directory is still empty afterwards; there is no .git directory or anything else before or after.

Instead of the current behavior I would have expected an error that the directory isn't a git repo and that I need to perform git init first, or maybe I might have expected that git flow init calls git init automatically in this case or asks if this should be done.

[bmcdonnell-fb]

Did you at some point prior do git flow init --local or --system?
https://git-flow.sh/docs/configuration/

[VanNostrand]

As I could not remember if I did that long ago, I checked via git config list:

safe.directory=abc
safe.directory=def
user.email=mymail
user.name=myname
init.defaultbranch=main

It includes my /etc/gitconfig (the safe.directory lines) and ~/.gitconfig (user and defaultbranch) and there is no .git/config

[alexrinass]

I cannot reproduce this. Running git flow init inside an empty directory (e.g. /tmp/t1) yields:

$ git flow init
Error: failed to check if git repository: not a git repository. Please run 'git init' first

Same if a global git-flow-avh config exists but no existing git repository is found. This output only appears for me if there is an existing git repo and a git-flow-avh config somehow available.