1 GNU Wget NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
3 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end for copying conditions.
6 Please send GNU Wget bug reports to <bug-wget@gnu.org>.
10 ** It is now possible to specify that POST method be used for HTTP
11 requests. For example, `wget --post-data="id=foo&data=bar" URL' will
12 send a POST request with the specified contents.
14 ** IPv6 is experimentally supported.
16 ** The `--timeout' option now affects DNS lookup and establishing the
17 connection as well. Previously it only affected reading and writing
20 ** Download speed shown by the progress bar is based on the data
21 recently read, rather than the average speed of the entire download.
22 The ETA projection is still based on the overall average.
24 ** It is now possible to connect to FTP servers through FWTK
25 firewalls. Set ftp_proxy to an FTP URL, and Wget will automatically
26 log on to the proxy as "username@host".
28 ** The new option `--retry-connrefused' makes Wget retry downloads
29 even in the face of refused connections, which are otherwise
30 considered a fatal error.
32 ** The new option `--dns-cache=off' may be used to prevent Wget from
35 ** Wget no longer escapes characters in local file names based on
36 whether they're appropriate in URLs. Escaping can still occur for
37 nonprintable characters or for '/', but no longer for frequent
38 characters such as space. You can use the new option
39 --restrict-file-names to relax or strengthen these rules, which can be
40 useful if you dislike the default or if you're downloading to
41 non-native partitions.
43 ** Handling of HTML comments has been dumbed down to conform to what
44 users expect and other browsers do: instead of being treated as SGML
45 declaration, a comment is terminated at the first occurrence of "-->".
46 Use `--strict-comments' to revert to the old behavior.
48 ** Wget now correctly handles relative URIs that begin with "//", such
49 as "//img.foo.com/foo.jpg".
51 ** Boolean options in `.wgetrc' and on the command line now accept
52 values "yes" and "no" along with the traditional "on" and "off".
54 ** It is now possible to specify decimal values for --timeout, --wait,
55 and --waitretry. For instance, `--wait=0.5' now works as expected.
57 * Wget 1.8.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
59 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
61 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
63 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
64 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
65 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
66 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
67 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
69 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
70 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
71 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
74 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
76 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
77 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
78 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
81 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
82 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
85 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
86 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
87 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
89 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
90 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
91 are now converted correctly.
93 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
94 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
97 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
98 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
99 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
101 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
102 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
105 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
106 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
108 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
111 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
112 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
114 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
115 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
116 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
117 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
119 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
121 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
123 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
125 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
126 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
129 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
130 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
131 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
133 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
134 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
135 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
136 stressing for the server and the network.
138 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
141 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
142 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
144 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
145 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
148 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
149 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
150 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
151 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
154 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
156 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
157 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
158 large sites (thousands of documents).
160 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
161 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
162 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
163 distribution installed on your system.
165 * Changes in Wget 1.6
167 ** Administrative changes.
169 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
170 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
171 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
172 are being helped by many other people.
174 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
177 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
179 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
180 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
181 the web page for downloading instructions.
183 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
184 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
185 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
187 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
188 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
189 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
190 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
192 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
193 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
194 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
195 default in the system wgetrc.
197 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
198 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
199 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
201 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
202 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
203 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
205 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
206 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
207 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
209 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
211 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
212 bound to multiple IP addresses.
214 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
216 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
218 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
220 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
222 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
224 ** Wget speaks many languages!
226 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
227 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
228 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
230 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
232 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
234 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
236 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
238 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
239 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
241 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
244 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
245 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
247 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
250 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
251 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
254 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
256 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
257 standards set by other GNU utilities.
259 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
260 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
262 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
265 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
266 distributed with Wget.
268 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
270 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
272 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
274 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
276 ** Can do passive FTP.
280 ** Info documentation expanded.
282 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
284 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
288 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
290 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
291 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
293 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
295 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
297 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
300 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
302 ** --convert-links should work now.
306 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
310 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
312 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
314 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
316 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
317 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
318 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
319 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
320 most importantly, use.
322 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
323 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
325 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
326 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
327 wget http://user:password@hostname/
329 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
330 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
331 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
333 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
334 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
336 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
337 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
339 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
341 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
342 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
344 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
347 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
348 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
351 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
352 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
353 sysadmin to like you).
355 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
357 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
360 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
361 through a proxy server.
363 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
364 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
366 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
369 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
370 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
372 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
374 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
376 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
378 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
379 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
381 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
382 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
384 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
386 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
387 turn on mirroring options).
389 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
391 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
393 ** A host of bugfixes.
395 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
397 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
399 ** Added support for no_proxy
401 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
403 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
405 ** More natural command-line options
407 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
409 ** Added support for robots.txt
411 ** Fixed some minor bugs
413 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
415 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
417 ** REST supported in FTP
419 ** Proxy servers supported
421 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
422 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
423 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
425 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
427 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
429 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
431 ** autoconf supported
433 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
434 Copyright information:
436 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
438 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
439 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
440 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
441 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
443 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
444 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
445 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last