Protected branches #6697

Thoughts on adding https://github.com/blog/2051-protected-branches-and-required-status-checks?

That's a really cool feature!

After a (legit) forced push, there is even a hint:

And once the guard is enabled, it's visible to anyone:

This is the message returned, when trying to force a push to a locked branch:

/tmp/protected-branch-test$ git push origin master -f
Counting objects: 1, done.
Writing objects: 100% (1/1), 205 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 1 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: error: GH006: Protected branch update failed for refs/heads/master.
remote: error: Cannot force-push to a protected branch
To https://github.com/dexX7/protected-branch-test.git
 ! [remote rejected] master -> master (protected branch hook declined)
error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/dexX7/protected-branch-test.git'

And if the CI tests fail, merges via git web, or command-line are blocked as expected.

I tested it with the github-merge.sh script:

Type 'push' to push the result to git@github.com:dexX7/protected-branch-test, branch master. push
Counting objects: 1, done.
Writing objects: 100% (1/1), 910 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 1 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: error: GH006: Protected branch update failed for refs/heads/master.
remote: error: Required status check "continuous-integration/travis-ci" is failing
To git@github.com:dexX7/protected-branch-test
 ! [remote rejected] master -> master (protected branch hook declined)
error: failed to push some refs to 'git@github.com:dexX7/protected-branch-test'

The guard can be disabled at any time.

Ok, tried enabling this for all branches.

@laanwj awesome! Out of interest, did you just stop force pushing or did you enable status checking also?

We do not use github infrastructure for merging as it is incompatible with digital signatures (for the obvious reasons.)

I only blocked force-pushing for now. I'm not convinced that making status checks mandatory will work with our custom merge script, as @gmaxwell says.

@laanwj :+1: