I want to know the different from latest to stable image for docker, there is no documentation on this.
ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:latest
ghcr.io/home-assistant/home-assistant:stable
Can anyone point me to the documentation that explain the difference here?
The official documents show :stable
Where did you see the :latest tag?
It have always been latest, i know the stable tag was introduced when ghcr was put in use some years ago.
I remember the difference in this two was how major version was handled,
but that is why i ask for the documentation of this.
Interesting, I have always used stable for home assistant even when I was originally running on dockerhub. But I am using latest for other containers, didnāt actually notice until I looked closer after seeing your post.
latest is the most recent build. That may be stable, it may be beta, itāll probably be dev.
stable is the most recent stable build.
It was introduced a long time before that.
This is not correct, latest do NOT INCLUDE beta or dev builds.
From one of the core team:
The official goal behind latest is ālatest buildā, which we build every night, which isnāt stable.
Yeah its the goal, apparantly there are still some work before it ends up there.
As i said early latest do NOT include daily build, dev or beta, but it seems the āgoalā might be reached in the future, so perhaps i should change to stable.
The official documents indicate :stable should be used.
The official documentation donāt tell the difference, so itās impossible to make any decision based on that.
The official documentation says use stable
They donāt have to explain the difference in the tags. Thereās no need to. They tell you what you should be usingā¦
So you blindly follow what you are told? I am not, i need a explanation becouse there are differences.
If you dont have anything to contribute with here please leave
If they left would they be blindly following what they were told?
But it seems they did come, as someone had walked that path before, as they where told 
stable or a version number is what the docs tell you to use, and are the ones you should use. They donāt explain latest because at no point in the docs is that mentioned.
TL/DR: latest isnāt documented at all and thatās deliberate
So in pr 2019 docs the recommended tag was latest!
Using web archive i found that the recommendation of using latest was there. So it was documented as i told.
When was the latest switched to stable and why did this happen?
Anyone have any thoughts about this?
All I know for certain is that when I changed my stack from dockerhub to ghcr (github) I also changed latest to stable as per the documentation I found.
I have been researching this issue, as I prepare to move from a āCoreā to a āContainerā (Docker) install. This is the only thread I have found so far actually discussing the issue: āWhat is considered āstableā?ā.
I even searched the Docker Hub, but could not seem to connect the stable tag with a version number. There are hashes, but I didnāt dig any deeper into that.
In my mind at least, I suppose I am thinking the final release from the prior month. Which should contain relevant breaking/bug/security fixes, etc., without including the latest (bleeding edge) features (which might be introducing new problems), and so by now be pretty āstableā for most users. But I was wondering what the devs considered āstableā, and what gets tagged as āstableā Docker image. I suppose it is situational and varies over time (but thatās speculation on my part).
Having said that, what the devs consider āstableā for most of users might not be what is stable for me, you, or anyone else. So I guess, without any definitive answer, I will specify whatever particular version tag (e.g., 2023.11), which I consider stable for me.
I suppose I view this as akin to keeping some specific Debian version in /etc/apt/sources.list (e.g., bookworm as opposed to stable). Which I also do, and for exactly same reasons (I donāt want any āsurpriseā upgrades or breakage, when I donāt have time to deal with it).
To give more perspective, I am generally a Debian Stable (sometimes Testing) user, as I find this the only sane way to maintain a complex system that needs to keep running every day. When upgrade time comes, I read all the docs and release notes (this can take me a month or more, as āfree timeā is limited). I take copious notes, and then further research specific questions I may have (as I am doing here). Only when I am satisfied I understand enough of implications, I finally make backups and proceed with the planned upgrade.
I sympathize with regular forum users who field the same questions over and over, very often from people who donāt even bother reading docs, searching forums, etc. before asking questions. In which case the typical āRTFMā response is warranted. But some times, there are a few of us out here who actually already did all those things, and are looking for some deeper insights perhaps, and that is what I see this topic as being about.
If anything, I think the topic should be edited to more accurately reflect the content, for example maybe the question I posed in first paragraph. But I will leave that decision to the mods (I did find the thread after all, searching for ādocker stableā, although it was quite far down).
