Install xh with Homebrew, apk, apt, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, scoop, winget, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• xh
• xhs

Project history

The GitHub repository was created on 2020-09-10. From its README, the central project premise has been stable: reimplement as much as possible of HTTPie's design, but with improved performance. That places xh in a specific generation of Rust CLI rewrites that kept beloved command-line UX while replacing heavier runtimes with compiled binaries.

The tool grew into a broad HTTP client rather than a minimal curl wrapper. Its documented options cover JSON/form/multipart bodies, pretty output, auth modes, sessions, redirects, downloads, proxies, TLS settings, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 prior-knowledge modes, Unix sockets, offline request construction, curl command generation, completions, and manpage generation.

Adoption history

xh's adoption story is unusually package-manager oriented. The README lists installation through Cargo, Homebrew, MacPorts, Nixpkgs, Alpine, Arch, Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora COPR, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Termux, Scoop, Chocolatey, Winget, and other managers, plus prebuilt binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

By July 2026 the GitHub repository had about 7.9k stars, showing that xh had become one of the recognizable modern alternatives in the terminal HTTP-client space. Its strongest adoption path is among developers who like HTTPie's request syntax but want Rust startup speed and simpler binary distribution.

How it is used

Typical use mirrors HTTPie: `xh GET example.com`, `xh POST :3000/users name=Ana`, headers with `Header:Value`, query parameters with `==`, JSON literals with `:=`, file upload items with `@`, and localhost shorthand such as `:8000`. The README also documents stdin/file request bodies, nested JSON paths, sessions, downloads, redirects, and output selection.

The package is useful in API testing, shell scripts, local service debugging, documentation snippets, and CI smoke checks where curl is too terse and a full API client is too heavy. The `xhs` alias/symlink convention gives a small packaging detail that matters: package installs can expose both HTTP-default and HTTPS-default entry points.

Why package nerds care

xh is a clean example of the modern Rust CLI packaging pattern: a familiar UX borrowed from an established tool, fast native binaries, broad package-manager availability, and generated shell/manpage assets. It competes not by inventing a new HTTP grammar, but by making an existing ergonomic grammar cheap to install and fast to run.

For package nerds, xh also shows how compatibility can be a product feature. Its value comes from preserving enough HTTPie muscle memory that package users can swap tools without relearning request-item syntax.

Timeline

• 2020-09-10: the ducaale/xh GitHub repository is created.
• Early project framing: the README describes xh as a friendly and fast tool that reimplements HTTPie's design with better performance.
• By the mid-2020s: the README lists package-manager installation paths across Linux, macOS, Windows, BSD, Android, Cargo, and Nix-style ecosystems.
• By July 2026: GitHub repository metadata shows roughly 7.9k stars and continued activity.

Related projects

• HTTPie is the direct design ancestor whose request-item syntax and human-friendly CLI style xh follows.
• curl is the lower-level incumbent HTTP CLI; xh even includes options to print curl translations.
• Rust and Cargo matter to xh's distribution story because the tool is implemented as a compiled Rust CLI and can be installed with `cargo install`.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/ducaale/xh
• https://api.github.com/repos/ducaale/xh/releases?per_page=5
• https://github.com/ducaale/xh
• https://github.com/httpie/cli
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ducaale/xh/master/README.md