Branch Protection

Time: ~4 minutes | Difficulty: Beginner

What You'll Learn

• What branches are
• Why protect the main branch
• How to set up basic protection

The Big Idea

Branches let you work on features without affecting the main code. Branch protection prevents accidental damage to your production code.

Git Branches Explained

main ──●──●──●──●──●──●────────────────●
              \                       /
               ●──●──●──●────────────  feature branch
                     feature work

• main: The stable, production-ready code
• feature branches: Where you experiment and develop

When the feature is ready, you merge it back to main.

Why Protect Main?

Without protection:

• You might accidentally push broken code
• Force pushes can overwrite history
• No review before code goes live

With protection:

• Changes must go through pull requests
• Required checks must pass
• History is preserved

For This Bootcamp

For a solo learning project, we'll set up light protection:

What We'll Enable

• ✅ Require pull request before merging
• ✅ Block force pushes

What We'll Skip (for now)

• ❌ Required reviews (solo project)
• ❌ Required status checks (we'll add CI later)

Setting Up Protection

Step 1: Go to Repository Settings

1. Open your repository on GitHub
2. Click Settings tab
3. In sidebar, click Branches

Step 2: Add Rule

1. Click Add branch ruleset (or "Add rule" if using older interface)
2. Name: main protection
3. Enforcement status: Active

Step 3: Configure Rules

Under "Target branches"

• Add target: main

Under "Rules"

• ✅ Restrict deletions
• ✅ Block force pushes
• ✅ Require a pull request before merging
  • Required approvals: 0 (solo project)

Step 4: Save

Click Create or Save changes

Working with Branches

Now that main is protected, here's the workflow:

Create a Feature Branch

# Create and switch to new branch
git checkout -b feature/add-login

# Do your work...
git add .
git commit -m "Add login form"

# Push the branch
git push -u origin feature/add-login

Create Pull Request

1. Go to GitHub
2. You'll see a prompt to create a PR
3. Click Compare & pull request
4. Add a title and description
5. Click Create pull request

Merge (After Review)

1. Review the changes
2. Click Merge pull request
3. Click Confirm merge
4. Delete the branch (optional but clean)

Update Local Main

git checkout main
git pull

Simplified Workflow for Learning

For this bootcamp, a simpler approach:

1. Work directly on main for initial setup
2. Use feature branches for larger features
3. Pull requests for important changes

We won't enforce strict branch workflow since you're learning. The protection prevents accidents, not normal work.

Quick Reference

# Create branch
git checkout -b feature/name

# Push branch first time
git push -u origin feature/name

# Switch back to main
git checkout main

# Update main from GitHub
git pull

# Delete local branch after merging
git branch -d feature/name

Check Your Understanding

• [ ] Branches let you work without affecting main
• [ ] Protection prevents accidental damage
• [ ] Pull requests are how you merge to main
• [ ] I've set up basic protection rules

Next Up

Let's add GitHub Actions to automatically check your code.

Continue: GitHub Actions Intro →