feat: support regex branch exclusions

[arturcic]

Description

Adds ignore.branches, a sequence of regular expressions for excluding auxiliary branches from version-source discovery and build-server normalization.

• Matches case-insensitively against branch names without the local or remote prefix.
• Uses OR semantics and treats local and remote-tracking names equivalently.
• Preserves the current branch and explicitly selected target branch.
• Keeps shared commits, shared tags, and configuration inheritance eligible.
• Avoids creating or updating ignored local branches during normalization while leaving existing local refs untouched.
• Includes configuration, public API, generated schema/workflows, documentation, calculation scenarios, and normalization coverage.

Related issue

Closes #5130.

Stack

1. #5151 - order configuration properties alphabetically
2. #5147 - ignore tags
3. This PR - ignore branches

Depends-On: #5147

Validation

• GitVersion.Configuration.Tests: 113 passed.
• Focused GitVersion.Core.Tests with LibGit2Sharp: 29 passed.
• Focused GitVersion.Core.Tests with managed Git: 29 passed.
• BuildPrepare completed successfully with zero warnings and errors.
• dotnet format src/GitVersion.slnx --no-restore completed successfully.
• Regenerated only schemas/7.0/GitVersion.configuration.json.

Checklist

• Code follows the project style.
• Documentation is updated.
• Tests cover the change.
• New and existing affected tests pass.

[mergify]

Merge Protections

🟢 Merge protection satisfied — ready to merge.

Show 1 satisfied protection

🟢 ⛓️ Depends-On Requirements

Requirement based on the presence of Depends-On in the body of the pull request

• depends-on = GitTools/GitVersion#5147 [⛓️ feat: support regex tag exclusions #5147]

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 26 out of 26 changed files in this pull request and generated no new comments.

[arturcic]

Hi @HHobeck, could you please take a look at this PR when you have a chance? Thank you!

[sonarqubecloud]

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
0.0% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

See analysis details on SonarQube Cloud

[arturcic]

@HHobeck when you have time please have a new look

[mergify]

Tick the box to add this pull request to the merge queue (same as @mergifyio queue).

• Queue this pull request

[HHobeck]

Could you change the configuration for GitFlow, GitHubFlow and TrunkbasedWorkflow and ignore all branches who are not permitted?

[arturcic]

Could you change the configuration for GitFlow, GitHubFlow and TrunkbasedWorkflow and ignore all branches who are not permitted?

@HHobeck, could you clarify which branches should be considered "not permitted"? Each workflow currently has an unknown catch-all, while adding all configured branch patterns to ignore.branches would exclude the workflow’s normal version sources.

[HHobeck]

Could you change the configuration for GitFlow, GitHubFlow and TrunkbasedWorkflow and ignore all branches who are not permitted?

@HHobeck, could you clarify which branches should be considered "not permitted"? Each workflow currently has an unknown catch-all, while adding all configured branch patterns to ignore.branches would exclude the workflow’s normal version sources.

Good point. These two concepts seem to be clashing. But is it more like if your current branch is not known, it will still be used to calculate the version? Or what happens if your current branch is ignored?

[arturcic]

Good point. These two concepts seem to be clashing. But is it more like if your current branch is not known, it will still be used to calculate the version? Or what happens if your current branch is ignored?

Codex researched the current behavior and helped draft this clarification:

An unmatched current branch uses the workflow’s unknown configuration and is calculated normally. If the current branch matches ignore.branches, it is still protected during normalization and calculated normally. The option only prevents matching branches from being considered as version sources when calculating another branch; it does not disable calculation for the checked-out branch.

[HHobeck]

Codex researched the current behavior and helped draft this clarification:

An unmatched current branch uses the workflow’s unknown configuration and is calculated normally. If the current branch matches ignore.branches, it is still protected during normalization and calculated normally. The option only prevents matching branches from being considered as version sources when calculating another branch; it does not disable calculation for the checked-out branch.

So it would make sense to ignore the not known branch, correct? It was just an idea to improve performance. If you think it is not necessary please go ahead and leave it like it is.

[arturcic]

Let's keep it like that, please approve

[arturcic]

@Mergifyio refresh

[mergify]

refresh

✅ Pull request refreshed

[mergify]

Thank you @arturcic for your contribution!