Prevent pushing to main branch

Oops, I just pushed to main!

Pushing to main branch when you meant to push to a new feature branch is embarrassing and annoying.

GitHub has a great per repo setting called “Branch protection rules” that can prevent your team from accidentally pushing to main (or master) branch. And also ensure that status checks like tests and linters all pass.

If you don’t have this set. Or if you’re an admin that’s allowed to override failed checks, nothing prevents you from pushing to main.

Git hooks to the rescue

• Copy and paste this into your shell in your local repo directory:

cat << 'DOC' > .git/hooks/pre-push
#!/bin/bash

protected_branch='main'
current_branch=$(git symbolic-ref HEAD | sed -e 's,.*/\(.*\),\1,')

if [ $protected_branch = $current_branch ]
then
    read -p "You're about to push to $protected_branch, is that what you intended? [y|n] " -n 1 -r < /dev/tty
    echo
    if echo $REPLY | grep -E '^[Yy]$' > /dev/null
    then
        exit 0 # push will execute
    fi
    exit 1 # push will not execute
else
    exit 0 # push will execute
fi
DOC

chmod +x .git/hooks/pre-push