Local branch protection

[laeubi]

Description

It would be good to allow some kind of local branch protection, e.g I want prevent the main branch is modified in any way in my local clone through commiting or change ref and so on.

Motivation

Once in a while I accidentally mess up my local clone because:

1. Create a small enhancement
2. Commit the change
3. Because I not cautious enough I'm still on main branch (and now I need to reset)
4. Even worse I might push the change (and now have updated my refs in the config)

To prevent his it would be cool to have some kind of local "branch protection" that:

• Gives an error or even better ask me to create a branch first if I try to commit to such protected branch
• As an alternative maybe disable all actions like it is done during rebase when there are conflicts

Alternatives considered

No response

Additional context

No response

[tomaswolf]

Does C git have such a feature? If not, any such "protection" would give a false sense of "safety".

I don't really see the problem. You don't have to reset. You could also just rename your local main branch to feature_XYZ and create a new local main branch from origin/main. Or just create a new branch feature_XYZ from HEAD (and check it out), then delete your local mainbranch (which will also be at HEAD at that point) and recreate it from origin/main. Finally, please note that you don't need a local main at all. It's just a branch like any other: simply a pointer to some commit.

Step (4) in your list above should not really a problem. If you're not supposed to push to origin/main, protect the upstream "main" branch on the server side (forbid direct pushes, accept only merging PRs).

[laeubi]

@tomaswolf there are always many options, I just can tell what would improve user experience. I also don't want real "safety" here just less ways to mess up.

Its like with an e-mail where one second after you press sen you realize to forgot the attachment. So firebird "warns" me if it detects some words that indicate I should have attached one. Not perfect security, but prevents me from needing to fixup smth later on...