Documentation Channels

The published documentation site has two public channels:

• dev is built from the latest successful documentation workflow on main.
• stable is built only from release or version-tag events.

The channels are intentionally separate. Development documentation may describe mainline behavior that has not been released yet. Stable documentation should match a released source revision or a version tag and should not drift on every main-branch push.

Pre-release State

Before the first release or version tag is published, the stable channel may not exist on GitHub Pages. In that state, use the dev channel for current project documentation and treat the docs stable badge as the reserved release-facing URL.

The stable publishing workflow preserves the existing dev channel when it publishes stable, and the development publishing workflow preserves the existing stable channel when it publishes dev.

Local builds and CI select the channel through DOCS_CHANNEL; see the documentation and CI controls.

Channel Metadata

Each channel includes channel-metadata.json beside the book and API landing page. The metadata records:

• documentation channel
• source branch or Git ref
• source commit
• source tag when the build came from a tag or release
• release name when GitHub release metadata is available
• build time
• workflow run URL when GitHub Actions provides it
• relative book, API, and rustdoc paths

The metadata is for traceability. It does not replace the repository source or the GitHub release/tag history.