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protect-main-branch

★ 30 Open GitHub ↗

🔐 Protect your main branch from accidental deletion or rogue code (force) push

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# Protect Master Branch

![GitHub Workflow Status](https://img.shields.io/github/workflow/status/dwyl/protect-main-branch/Elixir%20CI?label=build&style=flat-square)
[![codecov.io](https://img.shields.io/codecov/c/github/dwyl/protect-main-branch/main.svg?style=flat-square)](https://codecov.io/github/dwyl/protect-main-branch?branch=main)
[![HitCount](https://hits.dwyl.com/dwyl/protect-master-branch.svg)](https://hits.dwyl.com/dwyl/protect-master-branch)

</div>

## _Why?_

If you have an company/org
with lots of collaborators
who all have **`write` access** to your repositories,
it's a _really_ good idea
to ***protect*** you **`main` branch** 
from accidental overwrite or deletion.

## _What?_

If anyone in your organisation can
`git push main --force`
and _destroy_ all history of the repository,
someone could either 
_accidentally_ or _maliciously_
burn down your house!

> **Note**: we didn't create this
[meme](https://www.google.com/search?q=git+push+master+--force&tbm=isch),
force-pushing to `main` / `master` is widely known to be destructive
and potentially catastrophic.

## _Who?_

This is relevant to people/orgs
that have a few GitHub repositories
and want to protect them from accidental
(_or malicious_) destruction.

## _How_?

### Requirements

+ [**`Elixir` v1.5**](https://github.com/dwyl/learn-elixir#installation) (or higher)
+ Github API Token
+ **5 Minutes**

#### Github API Token

You will need a personal access token with admin rights
to all of the repos you want to protect.
To generate a token,
follow this guide from Github Help:
https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-personal-access-token-for-the-command-line

Your token only requires **repo** access:  
<img width="500" alt="Repo access options for personal token"
src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8939909/32742752-3a9f68d2-c8a2-11e7-9251-e022095f6ee0.png">

Don't give it more permissions than it needs.
See: 
[wikipedia.org/wiki/**Principle_of_least_privilege**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege)

Once you've generated your access token,
make it available as an environment variable by running:

```
export GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN=<your-personal-access-token>
```

> Note: we place this export statement
in an
[`.env`](https://github.com/dwyl/learn-environment-variables#3-use-a-env-file-locally-which-you-can-gitignore)
file to avoid losing the variable when the terminal session ends.

### Usage

Clone this repo:

```sh
git clone git@github.com:dwyl/protect-main-branch.git
```

Then `cd protect-main-branch`

Then run:  
```sh
mix escript.build
```

This will create a file called `protect`.

Use the script as follows:  
```sh
./protect --org <name> --rules <path/to/file.json>
OR
./protect --user <name> --rules <path/to/file.json>

Options:
  --org: Name of the organization that owns the repos you want to protect.
  --user: Name of the user who owns the repos you want to protect.
  --rules: A path to a json file where you have defined the rules you want to
           apply to the master branch of all your repos.
```

Either user _or_ org should be passed as an option, never both.

#### Example:

```
./protect --org dwyl --rules rules.json
```

You should expect to see output similar to the following:

```
"/repos/dwyl/learn-vim/branches/master/protection"
"/repos/dwyl/app/branches/master/protection"
"/repos/dwyl/learn-heroku/branches/master/protection"
"/repos/dwyl/learn-amazon-web-services/branches/master/protection"
...
"/repos/dwyl/auth-mvp/branches/master/protection"
"/repos/dwyl/flutter-counter-example/branches/master/protection"
Error 404: why
Error 404: learn-WebAssembly
  318 branches successfully protected
  2 branches errored
```

Repos will appear in the output in age order.
(_oldest repos first_)

See 
[Github API docs](https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/branches/#update-branch-protection) 
for full details of the protection rules available, and 
our rules file
[**`rules.json`**](https://github.com/dwyl/protect-master-branch/blob/main/rules.json) 
for an example.

protect-main-branch

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