title: Branch Policy with path restrictions in Azure DevOps
body: <p>Let's say my repository has three directories as shown below:</p>
  <ul>
  <li>a/
  <ul>
  <li>file1.txt</li>
  <li>file2.txt</li>
  <li>file3.txt</li>
  </ul>
  </li>
  <li>b/
  <ul>
  <li>file1.txt</li>
  <li>file2.txt</li>
  </ul>
  </li>
  <li>c/
  <ul>
  <li>file4.txt</li>
  <li>file5.txt</li>
  </ul>
  </li>
  </ul>
  <p>I want to create a policy such that if any of the files in directory <code>a</code> are touched, no changes in other directories (<code>b</code> and <code>c</code>) should be allowed in the same pull request. In other words, to change any files in directory <code>a</code>, the user must create a new PR and can't combine the changes with <code>b</code> and <code>c</code> files.
  There are no such restrictions on the directories <code>b</code> and <code>c</code>. That is, a user may choose to update files in <code>b</code> alone, <code>c</code> alone or combine updates to files in <code>b</code> and <code>c</code> in one PR.</p>
  <p>Is this something that can be configured in Azure DevOps? I went through the <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/repos/git/branch-policies?view=azure-devops" rel="nofollow noreferrer">documentation</a> and FAQs but didn't find anything helpful.</p>
  <p>Thanks in advance!</p>