promises
promises drops R6 for plain environments and wires async work into OpenTelemetry
Comparison · DevOps
ASP.NET Core vs httr2
A side-by-side editorial comparison of ASP.NET Core and httr2 — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
ASP.NET Core vs httr2: at a glance
What is ASP.NET Core?
ASP.NET Core's public feed is servicing traffic; the real work happens on the .NET 11 previews.
The repository ships on a predictable servicing rhythm — monthly patch rollups across the 8.0, 9.0, and 10.0 branches, dominated by branding bumps, dependency updates, and build-infrastructure work. User-visible changes are rare and concentrated in the 10.0 line, where Blazor fixes still land. The 11.0 preview tags appear separately and carry single commits rather than release notes.
What is httr2?
httr2 is growing production concerns: tracing, throttling and token hygiene.
httr2 is the tidyverse's modern HTTP client and the designated successor to httr. Recent releases have moved past request-building ergonomics into operational concerns — OpenTelemetry traces for every request, throttling that behaves correctly across repeated calls, and a fix for OAuth token caches that were never actually being pruned.
ASP.NET Core vs httr2: editorial side-by-side
ASP.NET Core
5.0DEVOPS
ASP.NET Core's public feed is servicing traffic; the real work happens on the .NET 11 previews.
◆ Current state
The repository ships on a predictable servicing rhythm — monthly patch rollups across the 8.0, 9.0, and 10.0 branches, dominated by branding bumps, dependency updates, and build-infrastructure work. User-visible changes are rare and concentrated in the 10.0 line, where Blazor fixes still land. The 11.0 preview tags appear separately and carry single commits rather than release notes.
◆ Where it's heading
Nothing in this feed suggests a directional shift: the 8.0 and 9.0 branches are in maintenance, 10.0 absorbs the remaining behavioral fixes, and 11.0 is accumulating previews one commit at a time. Recent servicing entries lean unusually heavily toward CI and internal feed authentication work — the team replacing expired PATs with build identity and moving pipelines to newer images. Read this feed for stability signals, not for product direction.
◆ Prediction
The cadence points to continued monthly servicing across all three branches, with .NET 11 preview tags accumulating until a preview release note consolidates them into something readable.
httr2
2.5DEVOPS
httr2 is growing production concerns: tracing, throttling and token hygiene.
◆ Current state
httr2 is the tidyverse's modern HTTP client and the designated successor to httr. Recent releases have moved past request-building ergonomics into operational concerns — OpenTelemetry traces for every request, throttling that behaves correctly across repeated calls, and a fix for OAuth token caches that were never actually being pruned.
◆ Where it's heading
The package is maturing into infrastructure for long-running R services rather than interactive scripts. The 1.2.0 lifecycle purge removed deprecated streaming and mocking APIs in favour of a connection-based model, and debugging affordances like httr2_translate() point at users who need to reproduce a failing request outside R.
◆ Prediction
Expect further observability and credential-handling work, with the rlang-driven cache hash change in 1.3.0 likely to surface follow-up issues as existing caches silently invalidate.
Alternatives to ASP.NET Core and httr2
Other DevOps products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either ASP.NET Core or httr2.
withr
withr rebuilt defer() on base R's own on.exit(), and got much faster for it
htmltools
htmltools spends three releases walking back its own fill-layout opinions
xml2
xml2 relicensed to MIT, then moved its hot accessors from S3 into C
httr
httr's last releases are housekeeping - the package now points users at httr2
magrittr
magrittr rewrote its pipe in C, then base R shipped one and the releases stopped
See all ASP.NET Core alternatives → · See all httr2 alternatives →
Recent activity from ASP.NET Core and httr2
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoASP.NET Core.NET 9.0.19
- 1d agoASP.NET Core.NET 8.0.30
- 16d agoASP.NET Core.NET 11 preview 7: OpenAPI generation environment support
- 27d agoASP.NET Corev10.0.11: [release/10.0] Limit Microsoft.OpenApi to disallow next major (#67772)
- 29d agoASP.NET Core.NET 10.0.10
- 29d agoASP.NET Core.NET 9.0.18
- 1mo agohttr2httr2 1.3.0 fixes OAuth token caches that never expired
- 1mo agohttr2httr2 1.2.3 translates requests into curl commands
- 8mo agohttr2httr2 1.2.2 emits OpenTelemetry traces for every request ⚡
- 1y agohttr2httr2 1.2.1 stops escaping colons in paths
- 1y agohttr2httr2 1.2.0 removes deprecated mocking and streaming APIs
- 1y agohttr2httr2 1.1.2 fixes AWS request signing and header checks
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between ASP.NET Core and httr2?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. ASP.NET Core is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is ASP.NET Core better than httr2?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. ASP.NET Core is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 5.0 vs 2.5), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other DevOps products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to ASP.NET Core?
Top ASP.NET Core alternatives in DevOps are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "ASP.NET Core alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/aspnet-core for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to httr2?
Top httr2 alternatives in DevOps are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "httr2 alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/httr2 for the full list with editorial commentary on each.