Which one should I pick for a new project?

I can only answer questions about brettwooldridge/hikaricp or freeok/so-novel. These are two completely different projects serving different purposes, so the answer depends entirely on your project's needs:

brettwooldridge/hikaricp is a JDBC connection pool library—use this if you're building a Java application that needs to manage database connections efficiently.

freeok/so-novel is a novel/e-book downloader and aggregator with web and TUI interfaces—use this if you're building tools to download and manage novels from multiple sources.

They don't compete; they solve different problems. Pick based on what your project does.

That said, if you're considering HikariCP as a dependency (rather than using it directly), note that RepoPilot flags single-maintainer risk and rates the project at 3.7/10 on OpenSSF Scorecard (weakest areas: Dependency-Update-Tool, Security-Policy, SAST). It has no known CVEs in its direct dependencies, but review the maintenance and security posture before adopting for critical systems.

FOLLOW_UPS:

• What problem does your new project solve?
• Are you evaluating HikariCP as a library dependency?
• What are your security and maintenance requirements?