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>.
8 * Changes in Wget 1.9+.
10 ** Wget no longer preserves permissions of files on FTP servers by
11 default. Anonymous FTP servers frequently use permissions like "664",
12 which might not be what the user wants. The new option
13 `--preserve-permissions' and the corresponding `.wgetrc' variable can
14 be used to revert to the old behavior.
16 ** Many options that previously unconditionally set or unset features
17 are now boolean options that can be invoked as `--OPTION[=yes/no]' or
18 with `--no-OPTION'. This is useful because it allows you to specify
19 non-default behavior via `.wgetrc' and then revert it again on the
22 ** The new option `--keep-session-cookies' causes `--save-cookies' to
23 save session cookies along with the permanent ones. This is useful on
24 sites that require you to log in before you can access some pages.
25 With this option, multiple Wget runs will be treated as a single
28 * Changes in Wget 1.9.
30 ** It is now possible to specify that POST method be used for HTTP
31 requests. For example, `wget --post-data="id=foo&data=bar" URL' will
32 send a POST request with the specified contents.
34 ** IPv6 support is available, although it's still experimental.
36 ** The `--timeout' option now also affects DNS lookup and establishing
37 the TCP connection. Previously it only affected reading and writing
38 data. Those three timeouts can be set separately using
39 `--dns-timeout', `--connection-timeout', and `--read-timeout',
42 ** Download speed shown by the progress bar is based on the data
43 recently read, rather than the average speed of the entire download.
44 The ETA projection is still based on the overall average.
46 ** It is now possible to connect to FTP servers through FWTK
47 firewalls. Set ftp_proxy to an FTP URL, and Wget will automatically
48 log on to the proxy as "username@host".
50 ** The new option `--retry-connrefused' makes Wget retry downloads
51 even in the face of refused connections, which are otherwise
52 considered a fatal error.
54 ** The new option `--dns-cache=off' may be used to prevent Wget from
57 ** Wget no longer escapes characters in local file names based on
58 whether they're appropriate in URLs. Escaping can still occur for
59 nonprintable characters or for '/', but no longer for frequent
60 characters such as space. You can use the new option
61 --restrict-file-names to relax or strengthen these rules, which can be
62 useful if you dislike the default or if you're downloading to
63 non-native partitions.
65 ** Handling of HTML comments has been dumbed down to conform to what
66 users expect and other browsers do: instead of being treated as SGML
67 declaration, a comment is terminated at the first occurrence of "-->".
68 Use `--strict-comments' to revert to the old behavior.
70 ** Wget now correctly handles relative URIs that begin with "//", such
71 as "//img.foo.com/foo.jpg".
73 ** Boolean options in `.wgetrc' and on the command line now accept
74 values "yes" and "no" along with the traditional "on" and "off".
76 ** It is now possible to specify decimal values for timeouts, waiting
77 periods, and download rate. For instance, `--wait=0.5' now works as
78 expected, as does `--dns-timeout=0.5' and even `--limit-rate=2.5k'.
80 * Wget 1.8.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
82 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
84 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
86 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
87 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
88 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
89 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
90 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
92 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
93 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
94 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
97 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
99 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
100 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
101 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
104 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
105 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
106 have been downloaded.
108 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
109 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
110 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
112 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
113 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
114 are now converted correctly.
116 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
117 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
120 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
121 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
122 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
124 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
125 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
128 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
129 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
131 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
134 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
135 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
137 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
138 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
139 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
140 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
142 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
144 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
146 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
148 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
149 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
152 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
153 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
154 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
156 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
157 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
158 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
159 stressing for the server and the network.
161 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
164 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
165 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
167 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
168 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
171 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
172 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
173 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
174 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
177 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
179 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
180 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
181 large sites (thousands of documents).
183 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
184 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
185 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
186 distribution installed on your system.
188 * Changes in Wget 1.6
190 ** Administrative changes.
192 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
193 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
194 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
195 are being helped by many other people.
197 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
200 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
202 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
203 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
204 the web page for downloading instructions.
206 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
207 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
208 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
210 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
211 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
212 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
213 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
215 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
216 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
217 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
218 default in the system wgetrc.
220 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
221 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
222 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
224 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
225 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
226 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
228 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
229 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
230 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
232 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
234 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
235 bound to multiple IP addresses.
237 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
239 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
241 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
243 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
245 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
247 ** Wget speaks many languages!
249 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
250 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
251 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
253 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
255 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
257 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
259 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
261 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
262 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
264 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
267 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
268 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
270 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
273 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
274 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
277 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
279 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
280 standards set by other GNU utilities.
282 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
283 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
285 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
288 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
289 distributed with Wget.
291 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
293 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
295 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
297 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
299 ** Can do passive FTP.
303 ** Info documentation expanded.
305 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
307 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
311 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
313 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
314 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
316 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
318 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
320 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
323 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
325 ** --convert-links should work now.
329 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
333 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
335 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
337 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
339 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
340 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
341 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
342 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
343 most importantly, use.
345 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
346 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
348 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
349 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
350 wget http://user:password@hostname/
352 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
353 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
354 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
356 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
357 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
359 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
360 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
362 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
364 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
365 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
367 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
370 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
371 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
374 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
375 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
376 sysadmin to like you).
378 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
380 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
383 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
384 through a proxy server.
386 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
387 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
389 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
392 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
393 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
395 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
397 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
399 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
401 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
402 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
404 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
405 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
407 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
409 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
410 turn on mirroring options).
412 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
414 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
416 ** A host of bugfixes.
418 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
420 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
422 ** Added support for no_proxy
424 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
426 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
428 ** More natural command-line options
430 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
432 ** Added support for robots.txt
434 ** Fixed some minor bugs
436 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
438 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
440 ** REST supported in FTP
442 ** Proxy servers supported
444 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
445 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
446 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
448 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
450 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
452 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
454 ** autoconf supported
456 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
457 Copyright information:
459 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
461 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
462 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
463 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
464 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
466 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
467 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
468 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last