As I read the protected branches they don't stop you pushing to the master
branch, they just put a few requirements on that.

Indeed, the limitations are very clear... but I somehow read them as "can't have merges by outsiders". Wishful thinking.

Note that some of your steps below are once only, like forking on github

But you need to sync instead.

and some should be once only or at least rare like cloning locally.

Each time git gives me some unclear message, or I tried an advanced command and am unsure about my repository state. But yes, it's rare. :)

First off, branches aren't copies, they are just a "pointer" to a particular last commit,
so there's virtually no overhead in having a hundred branches.

I didn't mean they are physical, and haven't complained about any machine overhead. They are hard for me, to keep in my head.

Just clone geany/geany [...]
add your remote git remote add myname [...]
and enjoy a simple life

Thank you. I will.

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