+
+=head1 Topic branches and rewriting history
+
+Individual committers should create topic branches under
+B<yourname>/B<some_descriptive_name>. Other committers should check
+with a topic branch's creator before making any change to it.
+
+The simplest way to create a remote topic branch that works on all
+versions of git is to push the current head as a new branch on the
+remote, then check it out locally:
+
+ $ branch="$yourname/$some_descriptive_name"
+ $ git push origin HEAD:$branch
+ $ git checkout -b $branch origin/$branch
+
+Users of git 1.7 or newer can do it in a more obvious manner:
+
+ $ branch="$yourname/$some_descriptive_name"
+ $ git checkout -b $branch
+ $ git push origin -u $branch
+
+If you are not the creator of B<yourname>/B<some_descriptive_name>, you
+might sometimes find that the original author has edited the branch's
+history. There are lots of good reasons for this. Sometimes, an author
+might simply be rebasing the branch onto a newer source point.
+Sometimes, an author might have found an error in an early commit which
+they wanted to fix before merging the branch to blead.
+
+Currently the master repository is configured to forbid
+non-fast-forward merges. This means that the branches within can not
+be rebased and pushed as a single step.
+
+The only way you will ever be allowed to rebase or modify the history
+of a pushed branch is to delete it and push it as a new branch under
+the same name. Please think carefully about doing this. It may be
+better to sequentially rename your branches so that it is easier for
+others working with you to cherry-pick their local changes onto the new
+version. (XXX: needs explanation).
+
+If you want to rebase a personal topic branch, you will have to delete
+your existing topic branch and push as a new version of it. You can do
+this via the following formula (see the explanation about C<refspec>'s
+in the git push documentation for details) after you have rebased your
+branch:
+
+ # first rebase
+ $ git checkout $user/$topic
+ $ git fetch
+ $ git rebase origin/blead
+
+ # then "delete-and-push"
+ $ git push origin :$user/$topic
+ $ git push origin $user/$topic
+
+B<NOTE:> it is forbidden at the repository level to delete any of the
+"primary" branches. That is any branch matching
+C<m!^(blead|maint|perl)!>. Any attempt to do so will result in git
+producing an error like this:
+
+ $ git push origin :blead
+ *** It is forbidden to delete blead/maint branches in this repository
+ error: hooks/update exited with error code 1
+ error: hook declined to update refs/heads/blead
+ To ssh://perl5.git.perl.org/perl
+ ! [remote rejected] blead (hook declined)
+ error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://perl5.git.perl.org/perl'
+
+As a matter of policy we do B<not> edit the history of the blead and
+maint-* branches. If a typo (or worse) sneaks into a commit to blead or
+maint-*, we'll fix it in another commit. The only types of updates
+allowed on these branches are "fast-forward's", where all history is
+preserved.
+
+Annotated tags in the canonical perl.git repository will never be
+deleted or modified. Think long and hard about whether you want to push
+a local tag to perl.git before doing so. (Pushing unannotated tags is
+not allowed.)
+
+=head1 Committing to maintenance versions
+
+Maintenance versions should only be altered to add critical bug
+fixes, see L<perlpolicy>.