Is it possible to change branches (dev to stable) without sideloading?

I’m trying to improve my understanding of the process, and I can’t find a clear reference in the forum just now … The Easy Installer will of course wipe data, and as you say a differing underlying Android base will be problematic (“Can’t install this package on top of incompatible data."), so did anybody do the switch from dev to stable (or the other way around) manually within the same major Android version without having to wipe data?