Hello, *Disclaimer: I am a member of the Apache Logging Services (Log4j, Log4cxx, Log4net) PMC and I work on the Java Core Libraries (Networking) team at Oracle. This message reflects my personal views and is sent solely in my capacity as an open-source maintainer. It is not affiliated with my employer in any way and carries no financial motivation.*
On 2025-09-30, we had a conversation in the #maven Slack channel <https://the-asf.slack.com/archives/C7Q9JB404/p1759231362859829>[1], where I learned that the Java HTTP Client (i.e., `java.net.http.HttpClient`) was demoted from being the default HTTP transport for Maven 4, which targets Java 17. This change is implemented in maven-resolver#1599 <https://github.com/apache/maven-resolver/pull/1599>, which was merged on 2025-09-22 and documents the rationale. The concerns that motivated the change were unknown to the `HttpClient` crew at Oracle and the Slack conversation helped a lot to get to the bottom of things. AFAIU, in particular, two issues were of major importance behind this decision: 1. Incorrect handling of GOAWAY – MNG-8145 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MNG-8145> JDK-8335181 <https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8335181> (delivered in Java 24, ported to `17.0.17` & `21.0.8`) 2. GET method adds `Content-Length: 0` header, rendering services like JitPack unusable – jitpack/jitpack.io#7186 <https://github.com/jitpack/jitpack.io/issues/7186> JDK-8283544 <https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8283544> (delivered in Java 19, ported to `17.0.18`, which will be released on 2026-01-20) *I want to inform you that all two issues are addressed and backported to Java 17.* The Slack conversation spiralled into an `HttpClient` feedback session, which I am very happy about, and I shared all your remarks with the Oracle team; compression/caching/interception support, graceful GOAWAY support <https://github.com/laeubi/java-http-client/issues/8>, custom `SSLParameters` issues <https://github.com/laeubi/java-http-client/issues/6>, etc. If there is anything you further would like to ask/share, either now, or at a later time, you can either post it to the relevant OpenJDK mailing list[2] (e.g., net-dev <https://mail.openjdk.org/mailman/listinfo/net-dev>), or email/DM me. Cheers! [1] I want to thank Christoph Läubrich, Konrad Windszus, Matthias Bünger, Romain Manni-Bucau, and Tamas Cservenak for their kind help in providing feedback. [2] If the mailing list subscription is not working for you, please email/DM me.
