Hi, A few weeks ago we added branch protection rules to the repository. You can see the current rules in https://github.com/apache/kafka/rules/4026327
One of the rules we have is "Require linear history" which "Prevent merge commits from being pushed to matching refs.". The issue is that we have 1 merge commit (from 2018!) in our tree: https://github.com/apache/kafka/commit/92529ac6d8c117f1704d84f94f18b9497707a1b5 This effectively prevents us from creating new branches as it violates the linear history rule. I was getting the following error when pushing the new 4.1 branch: remote: remote: error: GH013: Repository rule violations found for refs/heads/4.1. remote: remote: Review all repository rules at https://github.com/apache/kafka/rules?ref=refs%2Fheads%2F4.1 remote: remote: remote: remote: - This branch must not contain merge commits. remote: remote: Found 1 violation: remote: remote: remote: remote: 92529ac6d8c117f1704d84f94f18b9497707a1b5 remote: remote: remote: To github:apache/kafka.git remote: ! [remote rejected] 465b01cd2cf378e825bc63f2cf34086215439b93 -> 4.1 (push declined due to repository rule violations) To workaround the issue, the ASF Infra team temporarily disabled the rule to let me push the new branch. The rule has now been re-enabled. As things stands today, this will be an issue again in ~4 months when we cut the next release branch. It seems Infra wants to give projects control over the rules they use but it's unclear if this will be available before our next release. See the discussion in https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/INFRA-26900 Thanks, Mickael
