Many people follow some kind of naming format for their branches. Be it because they're using GitHub Flow or Git Flow or because they've created their own meaningful naming patterns.
With the new Rulesets you can enforce branches with specific patterns. It was a bit confusing to me at first, because I had to think in inverse to make this rule work.
If you are on GitHub Enterprise you can use the metadata restrictions feature of the new Repository Rulesets feature:
But if you are on a different plan (free, team), here's a trick that will also do the job.
Create a rule that restricts the creation of any branch **, then selectively excludes prefixes from this restriction:
Include pattern:
**
Exclude pattern:
fix/*/release/*/main
Then turn on ✅ Restrict creations.
In case you need specific GitHub apps (such as Dependabot and Renovate or Azure Pipelines) to create arbitrary branch names, you can exclude them from the policy:
Title photo by Marco Verch: Train Light Signal, used under Creative Commons
Written by
Jesse Houwing
Jesse is a passionate trainer and coach, helping teams improve their productivity and quality all while trying to keep work fun. He is a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) through Scrum.org, Microsoft Certified Trainer and GitHub Accredited Trainer. Jesse regularly blogs and you'll find him on StackOverflow, he has received the Microsoft Community Contributor Award three years in a row and has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award since 2015. He loves espresso and dark chocolate, travels a lot and takes photos everywhere he goes.
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