# Git private branch Feature Suggestion 5 messages from 2025-09-10 to 2025-09-11. Participants: ynckz, rsbecker@nexbridge.com, brian m. carlson, Henrique Soares, Kristoffer Haugsbakk. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/64126 ## ynckz, 2025-09-10 23:28 Subject: Git private branch Feature Suggestion Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAGyVUB5QLV%2BHQMWT%2B0kDu1_H0uXHK7kTy35WqhXQaETZ5if5EQ%40mail.gmail.com ``` Hi Git developers, I have a request for you. Could you please add private branches? This is a really useful thing. Imagine that you want to publish your project as open source, but you need to hide the .env file in a separate repository. It's easier to do everything in one repository, but in a different branch. Maybe there is another way, and I'm just dumb as fuck, but here's another example: Say you don't want to release a new feature yet. To do so, create a private branch, make the feature there, then merge it into the main branch. Maybe I'm a dumb ass, and don't need to ask this of you, but GitLab, etc., anyway, I'd appreciate it if you could add this feature. ``` ## rsbecker@nexbridge.com, 2025-09-10 23:54 Subject: RE: Git private branch Feature Suggestion Message-ID: <061501dc22ae$45ac35c0$d104a140$@nexbridge.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/061501dc22ae%2445ac35c0%24d104a140%24%40nexbridge.com In-Reply-To: ``` On September 10, 2025 7:29 PM, ynckz wrote: >I have a request for you. Could you please add private branches? This is a really >useful thing. >Imagine that you want to publish your project as open source, but you need to hide >the .env file in a separate repository. It's easier to do everything in one repository, >but in a different branch. Maybe there is another way, and I'm just dumb as fuck, >but here's another example: >Say you don't want to release a new feature yet. To do so, create a private branch, >make the feature there, then merge it into the main branch. > >Maybe I'm a dumb ass, and don't need to ask this of you, but GitLab, etc., anyway, >I'd appreciate it if you could add this feature. Put your private content into a submodule and set the visibility of that submodule to private in GitLab. Your *.env files go in there and will not get shared. Once you have this working, please try to use polite language instead of what is In your message. Thanks. ``` ## brian m. carlson, 2025-09-11 00:00 Subject: Re: Git private branch Feature Suggestion Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/aMIRO83CyG_qtKez%40fruit.crustytoothpaste.net In-Reply-To: ``` On 2025-09-10 at 23:28:54, ynckz wrote: > Hi Git developers, > > I have a request for you. Could you please add private branches? This > is a really useful thing. > Imagine that you want to publish your project as open source, but you > need to hide the .env file in a separate repository. It's easier to do > everything in one repository, but in a different branch. Maybe there > is another way, and I'm just dumb as fuck, but here's another example: > Say you don't want to release a new feature yet. To do so, create a > private branch, make the feature there, then merge it into the main > branch. The reason we haven't added this is that it isn't secure. Git has a feature called namespaces, which basically implements the feature you want. There are different namespaces and references can be stored in any one of them. Here's what the gitnamespaces(5) manual page says about this: The fetch and push protocols are not designed to prevent one side from stealing data from the other repository that was not intended to be shared. If you have private data that you need to protect from a malicious peer, your best option is to store it in another repository. This applies to both clients and servers. In particular, namespaces on a server are not effective for read access control; you should only grant read access to a namespace to clients that you would trust with read access to the entire repository. It then goes on to explain the kinds of approaches that can be used to exploit this, but basically, if an attacker can find an object ID that it thinks the server has, it can acquire information about that object. Now, you might say, well, the object ID is private. But it's very common to leak those in issues, build logs, or as part of a version identified in a build, so in general we can't base security on that. Cryptography tells us that cryptographic hashes of general data are not secrets, so we cannot rely on them for access control. It could be possible to allow this _if_ Git had some way to know that the client was only allowed to access certain refs _and_ Git were configured to only allow access to objects that were reachable from those refs. However, Git doesn't have that information and that's in general expensive to determine, so it would make things like partial clone perform really terribly. It would also require a lot of changes to Git's internals and security model, and nobody has so far volunteered to do that. I will note that in general, secrets should never be checked into a repository. It's too easy to accidentally expose a repository, and when that happens, you leak every secret in the entire history, and then rotating them all is a colossal hassle. (I know, I've had to do it.) If you use a secret store, which is a security best practice, then this doesn't happen. -- brian m. carlson (they/them) Toronto, Ontario, CA ``` ## Henrique Soares, 2025-09-11 00:13 Subject: Re: Git private branch Feature Suggestion Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/aMIUJJTUegO3Nzcm%40localhost In-Reply-To: ``` On Thu, Sep 11, 2025 at 02:28:54AM +0300, ynckz wrote: > I have a request for you. Could you please add private branches? This > is a really useful thing. Any branch created locally is private by default. Just don't push it to the remote origin and nobody will have access to it. > Imagine that you want to publish your project as open source, but you > need to hide the .env file in a separate repository. It's easier to do > everything in one repository, but in a different branch. Maybe there > is another way, and I'm just dumb as fuck, but here's another example: If you need to share the .env file to few people, but not to everyone, then use a submodule. -- Henrique ``` ## Kristoffer Haugsbakk, 2025-09-11 08:15 Subject: Re: Git private branch Feature Suggestion Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/fccd1ea3-c57d-4c41-a31b-f0563848416a%40app.fastmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On Thu, Sep 11, 2025, at 01:28, ynckz wrote: > Hi Git developers, > > I have a request for you. Could you please add private branches? This > is a really useful thing. > Imagine that you want to publish your project as open source, but you > need to hide the .env file in a separate repository. It's easier to do > everything in one repository, but in a different branch. Maybe there > is another way, and I'm just dumb as fuck, but here's another example: > Say you don't want to release a new feature yet. To do so, create a > private branch, make the feature there, then merge it into the main > branch. > > Maybe I'm a dumb ass, and don't need to ask this of you, but GitLab, > etc., anyway, I'd appreciate it if you could add this feature. I use a sibling repository `.git-mine` with files that don’t overlap with those from `.git`. This way I can have two “working trees” checked out. -- Kristoffer Haugsbakk ```