Install hz with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• hz
• protoc-gen-hertz
• thrift-gen-hertz

Project history

Hertz began inside ByteDance as a high-performance HTTP framework shaped by internal microservice requirements. CloudWeGo's README says Hertz was originally forked from fasthttp, inspired by Gin and Echo, and paired with ByteDance's Netpoll network library.

CloudWeGo announced Hertz as an open source project on June 21, 2022, after more than a year of internal use. The same announcement describes hz as the one-click command-line tool that generates project scaffolding from interface definition files.

The Homebrew formula packages the command-line side of the project from the cloudwego/hertz repository, installing hz along with protoc-gen-hertz and thrift-gen-hertz.

Adoption history

Before public release, Hertz had already become a large internal ByteDance HTTP framework, with CloudWeGo reporting more than 10,000 online services and peak traffic above 40 million QPS. Public adoption grew around the CloudWeGo ecosystem, where Hertz, Kitex, Netpoll, examples, and hertz-contrib extensions form a Go microservice toolkit.

For package managers, hz is the convenient entry point: developers can install the generator without manually building the Hertz repository, then generate or update service scaffolding from Thrift or Protobuf IDL.

How it is used

hz is used to create and maintain Hertz projects from service definitions. The CloudWeGo announcement says it supports Thrift and Protobuf, depends on the official Protobuf compiler and Thriftgo, and can update generated scaffolding after IDL changes.

The surrounding Hertz framework targets high-usability, high-performance, extensible HTTP services with middleware, streaming, protocol support, observability hooks, and optional Netpoll or Go net transport behavior.

Why package nerds care

hz is package-nerd significant because it packages a generator rather than only a runtime library. It gives Homebrew users the same style of one-command workflow familiar from protoc plugins, thrift generators, and framework CLIs, while leaving application code in normal Go modules.

It also represents a common packaging pattern for large Go frameworks: the repository contains libraries, examples, generated-code support, and release tags, but package managers expose the small set of executables developers actually need on PATH.

Timeline

• 2021: Hertz launched internally at ByteDance according to CloudWeGo's open source announcement.
• 2022-05: The cloudwego/hertz GitHub repository was created.
• 2022-06: CloudWeGo announced Hertz as an open source project and described hz as the Hertz code-generation command.
• 2025: Homebrew tracked the cmd/hz v0.9.x tag series for the standalone hz formula.
• 2026: Hertz releases continued on the v0.10.x line.

Related projects

• Related CloudWeGo projects include Netpoll, Kitex, Hertz examples, hertz-benchmark, and hertz-contrib. The README also names fasthttp, Gin, and Echo as important influences.

Sources

• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/hz
• https://github.com/cloudwego/hertz
• https://www.cloudwego.io/blog/2022/06/21/hertz-an-ultra-large-scale-enterprise-level-microservice-http-framework-is-now-officially-open-source/
• https://www.cloudwego.io/docs/hertz/overview/