[itajaja]

I don't know if I would use branch restriction, it sounds like an anti pattern for the git philosophy (SVN file locks, anyone?). Why would I commit to someone else's branch, unintentionally? I think that a "gentlemen’s agreement" as your link states, is more than enough. Can you provide a use case where this feature is useful? Do you use it often in your workflow?

[scrollaway]

I can see it being used for autodeployments on a "stable" branch and no deployments on other develop branches, and the stable branch being write-restricted.

[sytse]

Agree, seems like the most common use case, that is why we implemented them in GitLab, for more reasons see https://about.gitlab.com/2014/11/26/keeping-your-code-protec...