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Read the Docs

COLLAB
Velocity5.0

Documentation hosting and building platform

readthedocs.org ↗

Read the Docs deploys weekly, and almost all of it is rebuilding how builds run.

documentation-hostingbuild-infrastructureephemeral-buildersuvweekly-deploys
◆Current state
Read the Docs cuts a dated release every week, most of them thin — a dependency sweep, a docs correction, a CI bump. The substance in this window is concentrated in the build platform: ephemeral builders moving from experiment to implementation, uv installed and configured for generic builders, private-repo permissions plumbed through to the isolated builder, and a hardened tar extraction filter when unpacking doctools.
◆Where it's heading
The through-line is the build layer being re-founded on isolation and speed. Ephemeral builders, an isolated builder that receives permissions explicitly rather than inheriting them, and uv replacing the older Python environment path all point at builds that start faster and share less. Around that, the product-facing changes are small and mostly clarifying: renaming External versions to Pull request in the interface, distinct commit statuses for skipped builds, a dropdown instead of free text when filtering redirects.
◆Prediction
Ephemeral builders moved from a test to real wiring across these releases, so the next step is most likely rolling that path out more widely and continuing the uv migration, rather than user-facing feature work.

◆Recent moves

  1. 22h ago

    Private repo permissions and uv setup reach the isolated builder

    Build-layer plumbing: private repository permissions now reach the isolated builder, uv and its dependencies install for generic builders, and UV_PROJECT resolves via an absolute path. Each is small, and together they are the isolated build path being made actually usable.

    View source ↗
  2. 8d ago

    Automated dependency update only

    An automated dependency sweep and nothing else. Weekly releases of this kind are a side effect of the deploy cadence rather than a change to the product.

    View source ↗
  3. 14d ago

    Ephemeral builders wired up; safer doctools extraction

    Ephemeral builders get real wiring rather than a test harness, tar extraction of doctools moves to a fully trusted filter, subproject aliases accept slashes, and a build API response attribute is preserved rather than stripped. The API fix is the one integrators would have noticed.

    View source ↗
  4. 28d ago

    Automation rules post commit status and stop skipping version types

    Automation rules stop skipping builds from other version types and now post a commit status when they trigger one, making rule-driven builds visible where users already look. The uv virtualenv path is also defined properly during builds.

    View source ↗
  5. 1mo ago

    Documentation link fixes

    Two documentation corrections, including updated jupytext links. A release in name only.

    View source ↗
  6. 1mo ago

    First test of ephemeral builders; S3 sendfile header fix

    The ephemeral builders approach gets its first real test here, alongside squashed core migrations and a fix stopping the Cookie header being forwarded to S3 when serving via sendfile. The S3 header fix is a quiet correctness issue on the file-serving path.

    View source ↗