Is there a way to set a specific branch on GitHub to pull-only (read-only) or can I only set this for the whole repository?
Asked
Active
Viewed 7,419 times
10
-
2Are you asking if it's possible to disallow pushing on specific branches? – Paragon Sep 23 '11 at 14:54
-
See also http://stackoverflow.com/a/5097437/6309 – VonC Sep 20 '13 at 06:34
-
You can do this easily with bitbucket. – Malcolm Nov 13 '14 at 21:32
-
Note: this is now (Sept. 2015) possible with GitHub! See [my answer below](http://stackoverflow.com/a/32384255/6309). – VonC Sep 03 '15 at 19:48
-
Note: since March 2016, an organization can restrict push to certain team members. See [my edited answer below](http://stackoverflow.com/a/32384255/6309) – VonC Mar 30 '16 at 20:05
3 Answers
17
You actually can (sort of), since September 2015.
That is because you now have "Protected branches and required status checks" (September 3, 2015), which allows you to protect a branch:
- against forced pushed
- against deletion
- against merged changes until required status checks pass
As mentioned in the twitter discussion:
@github nice, what about protect from just push and allow only operating through pull requests?
Adam Roben @aroben @lowl4tency You can do this via the Status API:
create a "success" status only on commits in PRs, then mark that status as required.
Since Nov. 2015, you can protect a branch with the API:
curl "https://api.github.com/repos/github/hubot/branches/master" \
-XPATCH \
-H 'Authorization: token TOKEN'
-H "Accept: application/vnd.github.loki-preview" \
-d '{
"protection": {
"enabled": true,
"required_status_checks": {
"enforcement_level": "everyone",
"contexts": [
"required-status"
]
}
}
}'
How can I try it?
To access this functionality during the preview period, you’ll need to provide the following custom media type in the Accept header:
application/vnd.github.loki-preview+json
Since March 2016, Organizations can now specify which members and teams are able to push to a protected branch.
VonC
- 1,129,465
- 480
- 4,036
- 4,755
6
There is no way to do branch level permissions on Github, but the gitolite project supports what you're looking for.
brycemcd
- 4,153
- 3
- 23
- 29
-
1well it's possible, but I can't speak to the roadmap of features Github intends to deploy. It's technically possible, but I don't know if Github intends to ever support it – brycemcd Sep 26 '11 at 09:27
-
since I posted this several years ago, @VonC's looks like it works for Github. Gitlab also supports protected branches. – brycemcd Nov 01 '16 at 19:00
1
Starting from March 30th 2016, GitHub does support branch permissions without any further tricks like required status checks: https://github.com/blog/2137-protected-branches-improvements
Johanned Nicolai
- 79
- 3