One thing first: since there is a problem with opening external links in PlatformIO (Platform IO does not open the external browser for login and links) it is better to query the registry via https://registry.platformio.org/ directly.
If you want to use ESPAsyncWebServer, please search for “ESPASyncWebServer”, not for “ESPAsyncTCP”. This will give better search results:
mathieucarbou/ESPAsyncWebServer
Asynchronous HTTP and WebSocket Server Library for ESP32, ESP8266 and RP2040. Supports: WebSocket, SSE, Authentication, Arduino Json 7, File Upload, Static File serving, URL Rewrite, URL Redirect, etc.25·TOP 100·109·Published a month ago
me-no-dev/ESPAsyncWebServer
Asynchronous HTTP and WebSocket Server Library for ESP32, ESP8266 and RP2040. Supports: WebSocket, SSE, Authentication, Arduino Json 7, File Upload, Static File serving, URL Rewrite, URL Redirect, etc.47·TOP 100·6·Published 23 days ago
esp32async/ESPAsyncWebServer
Asynchronous HTTP and WebSocket Server Library for ESP32, ESP8266 and RP2040. Supports: WebSocket, SSE, Authentication, Arduino Json 7, File Upload, Static File serving, URL Rewrite, URL Redirect, etc.74·TOP 100·66·Published 5 days ago
esphome/ESPAsyncWebServer-esphome
Asynchronous HTTP and WebSocket Server Library for ESP8266 and ESP328·TOP 100·81·Published 4 months ago
ottowinter/ESPAsyncWebServer-esphome
Asynchronous HTTP and WebSocket Server Library for ESP8266 and ESP3226·TOP 100·81·Published 4 months ago
At the bottom you will See “Published xxx ago” So you can see which one is outdated and which one is actively maintained.
A short story about ESPAsyncWebServer:
me-no-dev/ESPAsyncWebServer is the “original” one. But was not maintained for years.
A few months’s ago, mathieucarbou forked the repository from
yubox-node-org/ESPAsyncWebServer which is a fork of me-no-dev/ESPAsyncWebServer and continued the work. He registered this library as mathieucarbou/ESPAsyncWebServer .
In between me-no-dev & mathieucarbou started to work together an moved their work to ESP32Async/ESPAsyncWebServer - See here:
Project moved to ESP32Async organization at GitHub - ESP32Async/ESPAsyncWebServer: Async Web Server for ESP32
So in my opinion, ESP32Async/ESPAsyncWebServer is “the one” to use.
Now the answer to your questions 1 to 3:
Please search for “AsyncTCP-esphome” PIO-Home / Libraries. You will get 2 entries:
AsyncTCP-esphome by Hristo Gochkov (562,622 Downloads)
AsyncTCP-esphome by Hristo Gochkov (212591 Downloads)
Now do the same search via the registry website:
esphome/AsyncTCP-esphome - Published 5 months ago
ottowinter/AsyncTCP-esphome - Published 4 years ago
Here you can see, both libraries are registered by different users.
If you follow the github links you’ll see
ottowinter forked AsyncTCP from me-no-dev
esphome forked AsyncTCP from ottowinter
So you have to read a bit more detailed about the libraries, how old they are, what’s their latest version etc to find the “best” for you.
Following the link via the registry brings you to links2004/WebSockets
In the description you can read “ESPAsyncTCP is required”. So there is a relation between links2004/WebSockets and ESPAsyncTCP and that’s why the search engine showed links2004/WebSockets as a result.