Motivation to use GitHub Pages deployment via branch rather than via GitHub Actions?

[matthewfeickert]

The current workflow recommends using the older branch based GitHub pages publishing workflow

workbench-template-md/README.md

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	1. **Make sure GitHub Pages is activated:**
	navigate to _Settings_,
	select _Pages_ from the left sidebar,
	and make sure that `gh-pages` is selected as the branch to build from.
	If no `gh-pages` branch is available, check _Actions_ to see if the first
	website build workflows are still running.
	The branch should become available when those have completed.

instead of the GitHub Actions based publishing deployment. Is there any strong technical reason for this, or is this more of a historical result as The Carpentries have been established for a long time while branchless GitHub Actions deployment workflow is only a few years old?

A follow up question, and main motivation for me, is: Does it matter from a curation / review standpoint at The Carpentries org level if incubator lesson projects use the GitHub Actions deployment workflow?

I assume not, as it is just a static site either way, but I wanted to make sure that there isn't some sort of additional system that The Carpentries has that is looking specifically for a gh-pages branch to exist.

cc @tobyhodges given

workbench-template-md/README.md

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If you have any questions, contact [@tobyhodges](https://github.com/tobyhodges)

The GitHub Pages deployment workflow has been the default since 2022, and as this workflow was added in 2023 in PR #26, I wasn't sure if there was additional motivation to keep using the branch based workflow.

[froggleston]

This was probably a left-over from when all lessons were Jekyll based and there were fewer/less complicated build steps that we have with the Workbench now. From my point of view, it's much more a case of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" at this stage ;)

No, I think you're free to use either deployment process in the incubator, but if the lesson ends up in a formal curriculum, then it would revert to gh-pages deployment via branch.