Forking httpx as httpxyz

Summary

Why I forked httpx Yesterday I forked httpx. The new fork is called httpxyz. Reasons for the fork HTTPX is a very popular HTTP client for Python. There is lots of code depending on it. In 2024, I contributed zstd content decoding. This got merged and released! I was very happy and proud. Then I found out it was broken. I contributed a fix. The fix was ignored and there was never any release since November 2024. Me, and others, asked repeatedly for a release containing my fix. I sent email to the author personally. I got response when I added that I was considering forking. The author replied “1.0 development is on course”. Which is probably true but it has been in the planning for over two years now ref. Even the ‘patch level’ release for 0.28.2 has been in draft for over a year. And apart from this, there’s: Recently issues have been made hidden on the github repository, and discussions have been turned off. Having issues hidden makes it more difficult for people to contribute to the package but also to use the package since issues are linked all over in code and documentation also. See reddit thread There has been talk about an upcoming 1.0 release for years now, back to 2020 or so. In a discussion from October 2024, it was laid out that the 1.0 might look very different than the current version of httpx. Simon Willison added his points eloquently, please read them. Probably as a result, both openai and anthropic python packages, that depend on httpx, have put guards in their pyproject.toml to not install version 1.0. The author previously added breaking changes in minor updates, causing churn for many people, stating “The httpx package is not yet at a 1.0 SEMVER release” ref. It’s pre-1.0, that is right, but if so many people use your package a bit more consideration for compatibility seems in place. The author also created Django REST framework, and turned off issues and discussions there, a little over a year ago. This made life for people using the product mor...