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hydrogen-branches

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Updated 10-21 01:48

About this skill

Hydrogen Branch Map

main is the new version of Hydrogen. Classic Hydrogen lives on the 2026-04 back-fix branch. Both were developed in parallel from June to October 2026, so new vs classic Hydrogen diverged — details below.

Naming: never write "Hydrogen 3" or "Hydrogen 2" in public artifacts (docs, changelogs, PR descriptions, support replies). Externally they are "the new version of Hydrogen" and "classic Hydrogen" (also "legacy Hydrogen"). The README phrases them by version: "Hydrogen 2026-10 or later" and "Hydrogen 2026-04 and earlier"; public changelogs use neither phrase.

Where everything lives

Branch Contents Use it for
main The new version of Hydrogen (2026.10.x as of Oct 2026), framework-agnostic All new development; PRs formerly targeting preview
2026-04 Classic Hydrogen (2026.4.x), React Router 7 only Classic back-fixes and back-fix releases
do-not-delete-h2-backup-use-2026-04-branch Frozen snapshot of pre-takeover main (classic Hydrogen) Nothing — backup only, never target or delete it
preview Dead pre-release branch for the new version Nothing — its final tree became main via #4162, which merged a rebuilt copy of preview's history (new SHAs), not preview itself
dist-preview Compiled templates for the new version Nothing — generated; force-pushed by main's Release workflow, downloaded by hydrogen setup
dist Classic-era compiled templates Nothing — generated, frozen since 2026-02

2026-04 and the backup branch are protected: deletions and force-pushes are blocked, and merges require an approving review. .github/workflows/release.yml on each branch is the source of truth for what gets released where.

The new version vs classic Hydrogen

  • Classic Hydrogen (2026.4.x): built specifically for React Router 7. Last major is 2026.4 — the 2026.7 major was skipped entirely (no 2026.7.x was ever published).
  • The new version (2026.10.0, first released 2026-10-09): a significant rewrite. Framework-agnostic (React Router, Next.js, Astro, Nuxt, SolidStart, SvelteKit) with a different code layout.

Hydrogen uses CalVer YYYY.MAJOR.MINOR, where MAJOR is the quarterly Storefront API release month (1, 4, 7, 10).

To tell which line a change belongs to: cli, create-hydrogen, hydrogen-codegen, hydrogen-react, remix-oxygen, and templates/skeleton exist only on 2026-04 (classic) — a complete list, since the classic line gets no new packages. main (the new version) has hydrogen and mini-oxygen, among others. A diff touching classic-only paths is classic work.

One exception: shared packages like mini-oxygen exist in both lines' trees but are changed and released from main only — never merge changes or cut releases for them from 2026-04.

Timeline

  1. 2026-06-11: preview forked from main (at e73813faa) to develop the new version.
  2. 2026-06-16: preview's history was rewritten with new SHAs. From this point the two lines share no recent history — their merge-base is a 2022 commit.
  3. June – October 2026: parallel development. The new version on preview, classic Hydrogen on main.
  4. 2026-10-09, in order:
    • main (classic Hydrogen) was copied to 2026-04, and a second snapshot (do-not-delete-h2-backup-use-2026-04-branch) was kept as backup. #4157 then pointed release automation at 2026-04.
    • main was overwritten with preview's exact content (takeover, #4162).
    • The new version was released as 2026.10.0 from main (#4163).

The divergence gotcha

The new version's tree descends from June's main, not October's. Some classic-Hydrogen fixes that landed on main between June and October never reached the new version (others, like the MiniOxygen fixes, were ported). To audit exactly what landed on the classic line after the fork, use the frozen backup branch:

git log --first-parent --oneline e73813faa..origin/do-not-delete-h2-backup-use-2026-04-branch

Git history misleads after the takeover — in both directions. The takeover was a real merge that kept classic Hydrogen's history reachable (old main as first parent) while taking the tree wholesale from the rebuilt preview copy — so ancestry no longer implies content. June–Oct classic-Hydrogen commits show up in git log main and pass git merge-base --is-ancestor even though their changes are absent from main's tree. The reverse also holds: commits merged into preview were rebuilt with new SHAs, so a preview SHA (including a PR's GitHub merge commit) is never an ancestor of main even when its change is there — search by PR number instead: git log origin/main --grep='(#4022)'. In both cases, verify against file content, not history.

These gotchas are simply the cost of the approach that best preserved history: the takeover merged with old main as first parent, keeping every commit on both lines reachable. The alternatives were worse — force-pushing preview over main would have orphaned the classic line's history entirely, and content-merging dozens of divergent fixes into a foreign code layout meant hand-porting every one of them, each port a chance to get it wrong.

The rewritten history also breaks retargeted PRs: most preview-based PRs now target main but were never rebased — they show thousands of commits and a 2022 merge base. Don't plain-rebase one; that replays ~2,800 old commits. Move only the PR's own commits instead (this works whichever preview commit the branch started from — only branches cut before the 2026-06-16 rewrite are different). If the PR still targets preview, retarget it to main first:

git rebase --onto origin/main 011651af6   # 011651af6 = preview's final tip