A Python developer has forked the popular HTTP client httpx after growing frustrated with maintenance issues and lack of releases. The new fork, called httpxyz, aims to provide a stable alternative for the community while the original project remains stalled in development.

The fork comes after the maintainer contributed zstd content decoding to httpx in 2024, only to discover the feature was broken and subsequent fixes were ignored. Despite repeated requests for a release containing the fix, the original project has gone without an update since November 2024. The maintainer reports that even a minor patch-level release has been in draft status for over a year.

The fork addresses several community concerns, including hidden GitHub issues, disabled discussions, and years of promises about a 1.0 release that would break compatibility. Major AI libraries like OpenAI and Anthropic have already added guards in their configuration files to prevent installation of the unreleased 1.0 version. The new project promises no breaking changes, frequent releases, and a focus on stability over ambitious rewrites.