--allow-empty Git Flag (most people don’t know this exists)

Git GitHub

When it comes to git, there are so many useful flags that most people don’t even know exist. One of them is --allow-empty flag. Let’s talk about that in this writing.

Normally, we can’t create a commit without any changes in the git working tree. But I found this flag called --allow-empty which we can use in git to create a commit even if there are no changes in the working directory or staging area.

Here’s how it looks:

git commit --allow-empty -m "Trigger graph update"

Just that. No changes in files. No staging. Just an empty commit with a message.

Common Reasons to Use —allow-empty

Now here are some solid use cases I found when playing around with this:

1. To Trigger GitHub Contribution Graph

Sometimes GitHub doesn’t show your activity (those green boxes) if there’s no public commit pushed. But if you’re having one of those days, you can just run an empty commit like this and push it. It triggers the graph update.

git commit --allow-empty -m "Trigger graph update"
git push

I mean, if you are really concerned about those green little boxes in GitHub, you can use this flag to get your square.

2. To Rerun CI/CD Pipelines

If you have GitHub Actions or any CI pipelines configured to trigger on push, and you just want to rerun it without doing any code change, this is the move:

git commit --allow-empty -m "Rerun build"
git push

That’ll trigger your workflows again without touching anything.

3. Test Git Hooks / Automation

Let’s say you’re testing post-commit or pre-push hooks, or any kind of automation that runs on commit. Instead of doing dummy file edits, just use this flag. You can keep your repo clean and still trigger everything.

4. Mark Something in Git History

You might want to mark an event or a point in your project where something happened (even if there’s no actual change).

Example:

git commit --allow-empty -m "Deployed to production"

or

git commit --allow-empty -m "Reached stable version"

And that’s it.

Just found this today and thought it’s cool enough to be shared.