I would like to propose the following changes: 1. The `parent`, `core`, `client`, `website`, and `stylecheck` source trees shall be consolidated into a single Git repository for all of Apache HttpComponents 5. 2. All artifacts contained in this repository shall be co-versioned (i.e. released in concert, with aligned version numbers [1]), similar to the way `httpcore5-reactive`, `httpcore5-h2`, and `httpcore5` are co-versioned within the `core` repository today.
Under this scheme, httpcore5 would still be a standalone product subject to the same compatibility constraints as today, but friction would be significantly reduced for developers, as changes between `core` and `client`--not breaking changes (at least not after GA), but additive changes for new features, and bugfixes affecting both packages--could be coordinated in terms of development, code review, building, and testing. Currently `httpclient5` depends on the latest Maven release of `httpcore5`, which makes for a very awkward development experience: in order to test changes, I have to: 1. Make changes to core and install them locally as a SNAPSHOT release 2. Change the client to depend on this SNAPSHOT release 3. Change the client codebase, sometimes extensively, to work with this SNAPSHOT release of core 4. Install the client SNAPSHOT locally 5. Change whatever I'm working on to consume the latest SNAPSHOT releases of both core and client I think building (and versioning) core and client together would drastically simplify this procedure, making it less error-prone, and easier to develop and review overarching changes to all of httpcomponents. In the long term, I also think it would simplify things for users to have a single set of versions for core and client, similar to the way Jackson versions are aligned [1]. It's worth pointing out that these repositories can easily be consolidated in such a way that their histories will all be retained, so that operations like `git blame` and `git log` will continue to give useful results. It's also interesting to note that the OpenJDK project recently consolidated their repository tree into a single Mercurial repository [2], with the next goal being migration from Mercurial to Git [3]. If the other committers are open to considering this idea, I'd be glad to put together a proof-of-concept. [1] https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/dependency_version_alignment.html [2] https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/296 [3] https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/357
