Today we are happy to announce the next step in providing a portable HttpClient with automatic decompression: we just pushed the RC version to NuGet.

From Beta to RTM

We haven’t changed much since the beta we shipped three weeks ago – simply because we didn’t have to.

In general we follow these steps when shipping functionality via NuGet:

Beta. Feature work is first released in (potentially multiple) beta builds only. RC. Once we think a feature is mature enough (based on internal testing as well as customer feedback), we release an RC. RTM. If there aren’t any major bugs, we turn (generally the same) bits into an RTM, which NuGet calls a stable release.

For HttpClient 2.2 we’ve changed the following since the beta:

• Disabled write stream buffering on Windows Phone 8 when AllowAutoRedirect is set to false, which reduces memory usage.
• Enabled setting credentials for Silverlight when using the client networking stack
• Fixed some exception messages which referred to nonexistent APIs
• Made package metadata updates

Summary

Today we’ve shipped the RC for HttpClient 2.2, which updates HttpClient by adding support for automatic decompression. It’s supported on .NET 4.0, Windows Phone 7.5, and partially supported on Silverlight (see this blog post for details).

Assuming we don’t receive any reports of critical issues, we plan to publish an RTM version of HttpClient with automatic decompression within the next two weeks.

Please let us know how the updated HttpClient 2.2 works for you!