commit: no longer allow empty commit with the 'force' argument (API) The new way to allow empty commit is to temporarily set the 'ui.allowemptycommit' config option. allowemptyback = repo.ui.backupconfig('ui', 'allowemptycommit') try: repo.ui.setconfig('ui', 'allowemptycommit', True) repo.commit(...) finally: repo.ui.restoreconfig(allowemptyback) All known uses of force for allowing empty commits have been removed, so let's remove it from the allowemptycommits condition.