make-fetch-happen

make-fetch-happen is an opinionated, robust Node.js HTTP client that extends the standard `fetch` API with critical features for real-world applications. Currently stable at version 15.0.5, it maintains a fairly active release cadence, with minor/patch updates occurring every few months and major versions roughly annually, aligning with Node.js LTS updates. It distinguishes itself by wrapping `minipass-fetch` and augmenting it with capabilities like automatic HTTP-semantics-aware request retries, comprehensive HTTP caching (`Cache-Control`, `ETag`, `304`s, offline fallback), request pooling, transparent gzip/deflate, and support for proxies (HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS). Additionally, it provides Subresource Integrity (SRI) verification and integrates Node.js Stream support, making it a highly reliable and performant choice for network operations within the Node.js ecosystem, particularly for tools like `npm` itself.