[gdal-dev] Meaning of GDAL's git "stable" branch

[Kurt Schwehr]

Hi all,

I'm being asked the meaning of https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/tree/stable
and realized I don't really know what that branch is all about. I'm likely
just missing some documentation or discussion, so I apologize in advance.

I see in HOWTO-RELEASE, there is mention of `STABLE_BRANCH`. Is this
related?

https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/6a231dc29bfeb734227f7e646fe7c41b59e3167d/HOWTO-RELEASE#L105-L121

It points to
https://github.com/OSGeo/GDAL/settings/variables/actions/STABLE_BRANCH, and
it looks like git commits are from the current "STABLE_BRANCH" (e.g., 3.13)
are also pushed onto a "stable" branch:

https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/6a231dc29bfeb734227f7e646fe7c41b59e3167d/.github/workflows/auto_tag_stable.yml#L49-L50

There is a comment about a unique SHA so that ReadTheDocs gets run. It
looks that this is so that the "stable" Read the Docs link always has the
most recent text on the most current release branch whereas the release/X.Y
will be only updated when a release happens? That doesn't seem right as
right now stable is 4 hours ago and release/3/13 is 6 hours ago:
https://app.readthedocs.org/projects/gdal/ e.g. for these:

https://gdal.org/en/latest/
https://gdal.org/en/stable/
https://gdal.org/en/release-3.13/

Do I have any of that correct and what is the semantic meaning of the
"stable" branch that users should read into it?

Thanks!
-Kurt
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