Release 4.0 Alpha 1
-------------------

HttpClient 4.0 represents a complete, ground-up redesign and almost a complete
rewrite of the HttpClient 3.x codeline. This release finally addresses several
design flaws that existed since the 1.0 release and could not be fixed without
a major code overhaul and breaking API compatibility.

The HttpClient 4.0 API is still very experimental and is bound to change
during the course of the ALPHA development phase. Several important features
have not yet been ported to the new API.

Architectural changes
---------------------

* Redesign of the HttpClient internals addressing all known
  major architectural shortcomings of the 3.x codeline

* Cleaner, more flexible and expressive API   

* Better performance and smaller memory footprint due to a more 
  efficient HTTP transport based on HttpCore. HttpClient 4.0 is 
  expected to be 10% to 25% faster than HttpClient 3.x codeline

* More modular structure   

* Pluggable redirect and authentication handlers   

* Support for protocol incerceptors

* Improved connection management 

* Improved support for sending requests via a proxy or a chain of 
  proxies 

* Improved handling redirects of entity enclosing requests

* More flexible SSL context customization 

* Reduced intermediate garbage in the process of
  generating HTTP requests and parsing HTTP responses 

-------------------

HttpClient 3.x features that have NOT yet been ported
-------------------
* NTLM authentication scheme

* RFC2965 cookie policy (Cookie2)

* Support for multipart MIME coded entities  

-------------------
The following is a list of contributions tracked in JIRA.
Note that this is not a complete list of contributions or changes.
Since the API was redesigned completely, tracking everything outside
of the source code repository would have been too burdensome.

* [HTTPCLIENT-655] User-Agent string no longer violates RFC
  Contributed by Oleg Kalnichevski <olegk at apache.org>

* [HTTPCLIENT-541] Virtual host API redesign
  Contributed by Oleg Kalnichevski <olegk at apache.org>

* [HTTPCLIENT-614] Allow for different strategies when checking
  CN of x509 certificates
  Contributed by Julius Davies <juliusdavies at gmail.com>

* [HTTPCLIENT-136] Fixed inadequate proxy support
  Long standing architectural problem. Issue opened on 19/Dec/2002.
  Contributed by Oleg Kalnichevski <olegk at apache.org>

* [HTTPCLIENT-63] Support for pluggable redirect and authentication handlers
  Long standing architectural problem. Issue opened on 15/Jul/2002. 
  Contributed by Oleg Kalnichevski <olegk at apache.org>

* [HTTPCLIENT-245] Fixed redirect handling. HttpClient can now automatically
  handle redirects of entity enclosing requests. 
  Long standing architectural problem. Issue opened on 14/Jul/2003.
  Contributed by Oleg Kalnichevski <olegk at apache.org>

* [HTTPCLIENT-613] HTTPS connections now verify CN of x509 certificates
  Contributed by Julius Davies <juliusdavies at gmail.com>

* [HTTPCLIENT-497] Wire/header logger names consistent with class loggers
  Contributed by Oleg Kalnichevski <olegk at apache.org>

* [HTTPCLIENT-484] AuthSSLProtocolSocketFactory in the main distribution
  Contributed by Oleg Kalnichevski <olegk at apache.org>

* [HTTPCLIENT-589] Do not consume the remaining response content if
  the connection is to be closed
  Contributed by Roland Weber <rolandw at apache.org>

* [HTTPCLIENT-475] Support for unconnected sockets. HTTP requests can now be
  aborted while network socket is still being connected.
  Contributed by Roland Weber <rolandw at apache.org>