Adapted behaviour of ui.username() to documentation and mention it explicitly: Searched in this order: $HGUSER, [ui] section of hgrcs, $EMAIL and stop searching if one of these is set. Abort if found username is an empty string to force specifying the commit user elsewhere, e.g. with line option or repo hgrc. If not found, use $LOGNAME or $USERNAME +"@full.hostname".

#!/bin/sh

hg init
touch unknown

touch a
hg add a
hg ci -m "1" -d "1000000 0"

touch b
hg add b
hg ci -m "2" -d "1000000 0"

echo %% Should show unknown
hg status
hg revert -r 0
echo %% Should show unknown and b removed
hg status
echo %% Should show a and unknown
ls