We had set up some common branch policies in our last post. But how does that really work?

I’ve applied these changes and now will instantiate a change from a normal contributor (for this example, <me>@thinkahead.com is the admin and <me>@gmail.com is a normal user)

Clone the repository:

Clone repo
  1. Note: you can Generate Git Credentials if you want to clone with a token instead of your real password (useful in federated accounts or shared / ephemeral machines)
  2. You can also clone into VS Code directly
C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces>git clone https://ijohnson-thinkahead.visualstudio.com/idj-ta-example/_git/idj-ta-example
Cloning into 'idj-ta-example'...
remote: Azure Repos
remote: Found 79 objects to send. (69 ms)
Unpacking objects: 100% (79/79), done.

C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces>cd idj-ta-example

C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces\idj-ta-example>git checkout
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/develop'.

Let’s create some files and attempt to push them

C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces\idj-ta-example>git status
On branch develop
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/develop'.

Untracked files:
  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

        .gitignore
        README.md

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces\idj-ta-example>git add .gitignore

C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces\idj-ta-example>git add README.md

C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces\idj-ta-example>git status
On branch develop
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/develop'.

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)

        new file:   .gitignore
        new file:   README.md

Now let's commit and push:

C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces\idj-ta-example>git commit -m "new files"
[develop b16610d] new files
 2 files changed, 475 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 .gitignore
 create mode 100644 README.md

C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces\idj-ta-example>git push
Counting objects: 4, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (4/4), 3.71 KiB | 3.71 MiB/s, done.
Total 4 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: Analyzing objects... (4/4) (7 ms)
remote: Storing packfile... done (215 ms)
remote: Storing index... done (111 ms)
To https://ijohnson-thinkahead.visualstudio.com/idj-ta-example/_git/idj-ta-example
 ! [remote rejected] develop -> develop (TF402455: Pushes to this branch are not permitted; you must use a pull request to update this branch.)
error: failed to push some refs to 'https://ijohnson-thinkahead.visualstudio.com/idj-ta-example/_git/idj-ta-example'

So what happened? Why were we blocked?

Because we have a branch policy set, as the error states “Pushes to this branch are not permitted; you must use a pull request to update this branch”.

We are required to only commit to “develop” through the mechanism of Pull Requests.

Branches and Pull Requests:

We can create a feature branch and push our commit quite easily:

C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces\idj-ta-example>git checkout -b feature/1234-a-quick-change
Switched to a new branch 'feature/1234-a-quick-change'

C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces\idj-ta-example>git push
fatal: The current branch feature/1234-a-quick-change has no upstream branch.
To push the current branch and set the remote as upstream, use

    git push --set-upstream origin feature/1234-a-quick-change


C:\Users\isaac\Documents\Workspaces\idj-ta-example>git push --set-upstream origin feature/1234-a-quick-change
Counting objects: 4, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (4/4), 3.71 KiB | 3.71 MiB/s, done.
Total 4 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
remote: Analyzing objects... (4/4) (14 ms)
remote: Storing packfile... done (121 ms)
remote: Storing index... done (77 ms)
To https://ijohnson-thinkahead.visualstudio.com/idj-ta-example/_git/idj-ta-example
 * [new branch]      feature/1234-a-quick-change -> feature/1234-a-quick-change
Branch 'feature/1234-a-quick-change' set up to track remote branch 'feature/1234-a-quick-change' from 'origin'.

Now when we log into Azure DevOps and browse the Repo as our standard user, we see we are prompted to create a PR:

the blue text lets us create a PR from the Repos file view

Here we can give a title, description and see the files changed.  We can also add reviewers (and if there were required ones in our branch policy they would be added here as well):

PR Creation Window

Our pull request is now active and we see it listed under Repos/Pull requests.  However, we can see that we have some unmet policies:

Policies are on the upper right pane

One neat item we can do is “Auto-Complete”, which we will explore that after adding a work item.

To add a work item, we go to Boards and then to Work Items to create one - ideally i should have already had a Work Item in place before starting a change.

Creating a Work Item
An example Feature

Once saved, we can see the ID

Now back in the PR i can click “+” in the Work Items section on the right and add this WI

Click the plus sign (shown as "-" above) then type in the ID to add it.

Once added we can see how that policy is met:

Policies with some met