Why I forked httpx

published on 2026-03-25 · tagged with #httpx, #httpxyz and #python

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.

... continue reading