1 GNU Wget NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
3 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end for copying conditions.
6 Please send GNU Wget bug reports to <bug-wget@gnu.org>.
10 ** Administrative changes.
12 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
13 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer. Hrvoje still participates
14 occasionally, and both are being helped by many other people.
16 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
19 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
21 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
22 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
23 the web page for downloading instructions.
25 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
26 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
27 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
29 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
30 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
31 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
32 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
34 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
35 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
36 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
37 default in the system wgetrc.
39 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
40 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
41 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
43 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
44 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
45 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
47 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
48 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
49 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
51 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
53 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
54 bound to multiple IP addresses.
56 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
58 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
60 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
62 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
64 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
66 ** Wget speaks many languages!
68 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
69 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
70 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
72 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
74 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
76 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
78 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
80 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
81 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
83 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
86 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
87 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
89 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
92 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
93 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
96 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
98 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
99 standards set by other GNU utilities.
101 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
102 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
104 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
107 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
108 distributed with Wget.
110 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
112 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
114 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
116 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
118 ** Can do passive FTP.
122 ** Info documentation expanded.
124 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
126 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
130 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
132 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
133 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
135 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
137 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
139 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
142 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
144 ** --convert-links should work now.
148 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
152 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
154 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
156 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
158 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
159 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
160 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
161 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
162 most importantly, use.
164 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
165 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
167 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
168 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
169 wget http://user:password@hostname/
171 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
172 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
173 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
175 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
176 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
178 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
179 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
181 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
183 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
184 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
186 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
189 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
190 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
193 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
194 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
195 sysadmin to like you).
197 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
199 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
202 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
203 through a proxy server.
205 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
206 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
208 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
211 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
212 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
214 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
216 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
218 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
220 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
221 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
223 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
224 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
226 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
228 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
229 turn on mirroring options).
231 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
233 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
235 ** A host of bugfixes.
237 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
239 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
241 ** Added support for no_proxy
243 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
245 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
247 ** More natural command-line options
249 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
251 ** Added support for robots.txt
253 ** Fixed some minor bugs
255 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
257 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
259 ** REST supported in FTP
261 ** Proxy servers supported
263 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
264 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
265 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
267 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
269 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
271 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
273 ** autoconf supported
275 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
276 Copyright information:
278 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
280 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
281 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
282 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
283 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
285 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
286 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
287 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last