About protected branches

About branch protection rules

You can enforce certain workflows or requirements before a collaborator can push changes to a branch in your repository, including merging a pull request into the branch, by creating a branch protection rule.

By default, each branch protection rule disables force pushes to the matching branches and prevents the matching branches from being deleted. You can optionally disable these restrictions and enable additional branch protection settings.

By default, the restrictions of a branch protection rule don't apply to people with admin permissions to the repository or custom roles with the "bypass branch protections" permission. You can optionally apply the restrictions to administrators and roles with the "bypass branch protections" permission, too. For more information, see "Managing custom repository roles for an organization".

可以在存储库中为特定分支、所有分支或者与使用 fnmatch 语法指定的命名模式匹配的任何分支创建分支保护规则。 例如，若要保护包含单词 release 的任何分支，可以为 *release* 创建分支规则。 For more information about branch name patterns, see "Managing a branch protection rule."

您可以配置拉取请求在满足所有合并要求时自动合并。 有关详细信息，请参阅“自动合并拉取请求”。

About branch protection settings

For each branch protection rule, you can choose to enable or disable the following settings.

• Require pull request reviews before merging

• Require status checks before merging

• Require conversation resolution before merging

• Require signed commits

• Require linear history

• Require merge queue

• Require deployments to succeed before merging

• Do not allow bypassing the above settings

• Restrict who can push to matching branches

• Allow force pushes

• Allow deletions

For more information on how to set up branch protection, see "Managing a branch protection rule."

Require pull request reviews before merging

仓库管理员可以要求所有拉取请求在有人将拉取请求合并到受保护分支之前获得特定数量的批准审查。 您可以要求仓库中具有写入权限的人或指定代码所有者批准审查。

If you enable required reviews, collaborators can only push changes to a protected branch via a pull request that is approved by the required number of reviewers with write permissions.

If a person with admin permissions chooses the Request changes option in a review, then that person must approve the pull request before the pull request can be merged. If a reviewer who requests changes on a pull request isn't available, anyone with write permissions for the repository can dismiss the blocking review.

即使在所有必需的审查者已经批准拉取请求之后，如果还有其他打开的拉取请求有头部分支指向同一待处理或拒绝审查的评论，协作者也不能合并拉请求。 具有写入权限的人必须先批准或取消对其他拉取请求的阻止审查。

If a collaborator attempts to merge a pull request with pending or rejected reviews into the protected branch, the collaborator will receive an error message.

remote: error: GH006: Protected branch update failed for refs/heads/main.
remote: error: Changes have been requested.

Optionally, you can choose to dismiss stale pull request approvals when commits are pushed. If anyone pushes a commit that modifies code to an approved pull request, the approval will be dismissed, and the pull request cannot be merged. This doesn't apply if the collaborator pushes commits that don't modify code, like merging the base branch into the pull request's branch. For information about the base branch, see "About pull requests."

Optionally, you can restrict the ability to dismiss pull request reviews to specific people or teams. For more information, see "Dismissing a pull request review."

Optionally, you can choose to require reviews from code owners. If you do, any pull request that affects code with a code owner must be approved by that code owner before the pull request can be merged into the protected branch.

Require status checks before merging

Required status checks ensure that all required CI tests are passing before collaborators can make changes to a protected branch. Required status checks can be checks or statuses. For more information, see "About status checks."

Before you can enable required status checks, you must configure the repository to use the status API. For more information, see "Repositories" in the REST documentation.

After enabling required status checks, all required status checks must pass before collaborators can merge changes into the protected branch. After all required status checks pass, any commits must either be pushed to another branch and then merged or pushed directly to the protected branch.

Any person or integration with write permissions to a repository can set the state of any status check in the repository, but in some cases you may only want to accept a status check from a specific GitHub App. When you add a required status check, you can select an app that has recently set this check as the expected source of status updates. If the status is set by any other person or integration, merging won't be allowed. If you select "any source", you can still manually verify the author of each status, listed in the merge box.

You can set up required status checks to either be "loose" or "strict." The type of required status check you choose determines whether your branch is required to be up to date with the base branch before merging.

Type of required status check	Setting	Merge requirements	Considerations
Strict	The Require branches to be up to date before merging checkbox is checked.	The branch must be up to date with the base branch before merging.	This is the default behavior for required status checks. More builds may be required, as you'll need to bring the head branch up to date after other collaborators merge pull requests to the protected base branch.
Loose	The Require branches to be up to date before merging checkbox is not checked.	The branch does not have to be up to date with the base branch before merging.	You'll have fewer required builds, as you won't need to bring the head branch up to date after other collaborators merge pull requests. Status checks may fail after you merge your branch if there are incompatible changes with the base branch.
Disabled	The Require status checks to pass before merging checkbox is not checked.	The branch has no merge restrictions.	If required status checks aren't enabled, collaborators can merge the branch at any time, regardless of whether it is up to date with the base branch. This increases the possibility of incompatible changes.

For troubleshooting information, see "Troubleshooting required status checks."

Require conversation resolution before merging

Requires all comments on the pull request to be resolved before it can be merged to a protected branch. This ensures that all comments are addressed or acknowledged before merge.

Require signed commits

When you enable required commit signing on a branch, contributors and bots can only push commits that have been signed and verified to the branch. For more information, see "About commit signature verification."

You can always push local commits to the branch if the commits are signed and verified. You can also merge signed and verified commits into the branch using a pull request on GitHub. However, you cannot squash and merge a pull request into the branch on GitHub unless you are the author of the pull request. You can squash and merge pull requests locally. For more information, see "Checking out pull requests locally."

For more information about merge methods, see "About merge methods on GitHub."

Require linear history

Enforcing a linear commit history prevents collaborators from pushing merge commits to the branch. This means that any pull requests merged into the protected branch must use a squash merge or a rebase merge. A strictly linear commit history can help teams reverse changes more easily. For more information about merge methods, see "About pull request merges."

Before you can require a linear commit history, your repository must allow squash merging or rebase merging. For more information, see "Configuring pull request merges."

Require merge queue

合并队列可以提升拉取请求合并到繁忙的目标分支的速度，同时确保所有必需的分支保护检查都通过。

拉取请求通过所有必需的分支保护检查后，对存储库具有写入访问权限的用户可以将该拉取请求添加到合并队列。

合并队列可以使用 GitHub Actions。 有关详细信息，请参阅“GitHub Actions”。

一旦通过了所有必需的 CI 检查，GitHub 将根据分支保护中配置的合并策略合并拉取请求。

有关合并队列的信息，请参阅“管理合并队列”。

Require deployments to succeed before merging

You can require that changes are successfully deployed to specific environments before a branch can be merged. For example, you can use this rule to ensure that changes are successfully deployed to a staging environment before the changes merge to your default branch.

Do not allow bypassing the above settings

By default, the restrictions of a branch protection rule do not apply to people with admin permissions to the repository or custom roles with the "bypass branch protections" permission in a repository.

You can enable this setting to apply the restrictions to admins and roles with the "bypass branch protections" permission, too. For more information, see "Managing custom repository roles for an organization".

Restrict who can push to matching branches

You can enable branch restrictions if your repository is owned by an organization using GitHub Team or GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

When you enable branch restrictions, only users, teams, or apps that have been given permission can push to the protected branch. You can view and edit the users, teams, or apps with push access to a protected branch in the protected branch's settings. When status checks are required, the people, teams, and apps that have permission to push to a protected branch will still be prevented from merging into the branch when the required checks fail. People, teams, and apps that have permission to push to a protected branch will still need to create a pull request when pull requests are required.

Optionally, you can apply the same restrictions to the creation of branches that match the rule. For example, if you create a rule that only allows a certain team to push to any branches that contain the word release, only members of that team would be able to create a new branch that contains the word release.

You can only give push access to a protected branch, or give permission to create a matching branch, to users, teams, or installed GitHub Apps with write access to a repository. People and apps with admin permissions to a repository are always able to push to a protected branch or create a matching branch.

Allow force pushes

By default, GitHub blocks force pushes on all protected branches. When you enable force pushes to a protected branch, you can choose one of two groups who can force push:

1. Allow everyone with at least write permissions to the repository to force push to the branch, including those with admin permissions.
2. Allow only specific people or teams to force push to the branch.

If someone force pushes to a branch, the force push may overwrite commits that other collaborators based their work on. People may have merge conflicts or corrupted pull requests.

Enabling force pushes will not override any other branch protection rules. For example, if a branch requires a linear commit history, you cannot force push merge commits to that branch.

Allow deletions

By default, you cannot delete a protected branch. When you enable deletion of a protected branch, anyone with at least write permissions to the repository can delete the branch.