How to prevent changes without a pull request to hotfix and release branches?

[Chris Jones]

Having recently migrated from Bitbucket Server to Cloud we found some subtly inconsistent branch permission functionality. Specifically there's no permission equivalent to Prevent Changes without a pull request. The only way I found to mandate a pull request is by not assigning write access to these branches. Problem is that Write access is required to create hotfix and release branches, a task normally processed by one of the developers since adopting gitflow 8 years ago...

The only solution so far is assign write permission for these branches another user that doesn't usually commit changes. Why doesn't Cloud offer the same robust function as Server?

Bitbucket Server

[Saxea _Flowie_]

Hi @Chris Jones

You probably aware of this, but Bitbucket Server and Bitbucket Cloud are different products, and maintained by different teams. 

I'm also aware of Atlassian's Server to Cloud migration whole movement even though there are some significant feature gaps between the products, so I understand how that can be frustrating. We actually provide a third party Bitbucket Cloud app, Flowie, that helps cover a lot of these gaps.

In the specific case you are asking, Flowie will let you create a new branch on a 'new/release/2.0' and it will move it to the actual protected branch 'release/2.0'. Only the app has write permission and no users need write permissions, which also with helps prevent accidental commits, merges or sync, on cascading scenarios. 

This is something you could automate yourself, using a webhook or writing your own app, but Flowie supports it out of the box.