From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: Restricting access to a branch
Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 18:43:55 -0700
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Cc: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@vyatta.com>, git@vger.kernel.org
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0805211732520.3081@woody.linux-foundation.org>
 (Linus Torvalds's message of "Wed, 21 May 2008 17:37:20 -0700 (PDT)")
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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.