From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 01:43:55 GMT
Subject: Re: Restricting access to a branch
Message-ID: <7v63t7xgdg.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0805211732520.3081@woody.linux-foundation.org>

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:

> What you *can* do is:
>
>  - rename the branch to something that includes a slash (aka 
>    subdirectory). Let's call it "frozen/mybranch" as an example.
>
>  - do a 'git gc' to make sure that branch is in the packed refs file.
>
>  - make the subdirectory of that branch is unwritable (ie just do 
>    something like "chmod -w refs/heads/frozen")
>
> and now the filesystem permissions should mean that you can't actually 
> update that branch any more, even though you can read it.

Hmmmmm... and deleting of the branch would take the same lock used for
updating, which is under frozen/ directory, so that is also safe.

That's sneaky.

I'd however throw that into "happens to work, unsure if we would want to
promise supporting it as a _feature_ forever" category.