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

[Even Rouault]

Kurt,

you pretty much figure it out yourself. This is *only* an artifact to 
workaround some RtD behavior about how the "stable" branch at 
https://gdal.org/en/stable/ is kept in sync with the latest git 
release/3.13 branch (we might have missed something, or that might be an 
issue that has been solved). There might a delay of few hours between a 
git commit and the corresponding run of the github CI job that does the 
resync, depending on the intensity of the activity in the OSGeo/GDAL 
repo, so the 2 hours delay you've noted seems OK to me

We haven't advertized the use of this branch for builds of the software 
itself

Even

Le 25/06/2026 à 20:56, Kurt Schwehr via gdal-dev a écrit :
> 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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