In short what you get from STABLE branch is what version 10.1 will have.

Here is an explanation:

- RELEASE is actual release that is forked out (it will only contain security and other critical fixes) of the STABLE branch.

- STABLE is just a development branch (currently it is anything in version 10) as opposed to CURRENT which is a bleeding edge.

- CURRENT is what will be next version (version 11), once they finish adding features it will become next STABLE branch and CURRENT will be used for version 12.

While everything that ends up at STABLE needs to go through pointyhat build system, so it should always compile and pass regression testing, there's still a possibility of things breaking up.

Since 10.0 is about to be released STABLE contains what will become 10.1.

Here's example how the branches look like:

    ----------------- CURRENT (version 11)
     \
      -STABLE (version 10) ---
         \                  \
          - 10.0-RELEASE     - 10.1-RELEASE
             \     \
              -p1   -p2

At this time since 10.0 was just released 10-STABLE will be very close to 10.0-RELEASE

RELEASE is an artifact. STABLE is a development branch for the current non-experimental (stable) branch and from which releases are cut. It's still a development branch, though, so things can break on it.

Since 10-RELEASE was just cut it's probably close (identical?) to 10-STABLE, but that won't last long.

In this case STABLE refers to the ABI, not the code itself. RELEASE is code that doesn't change, other than security patches and major bugs.

It is confusing, however, but there is some logic to it.