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

[Kurt Schwehr]

Thanks! That's exactly the info I needed.

-Kurt

On Thu, Jun 25, 2026 at 12:21 PM Even Rouault <even.rouault at spatialys.com>
wrote:

> 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
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gdal-dev mailing list
> > gdal-dev at lists.osgeo.org
> > https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/gdal-dev
>
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