1 GNU Wget NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
3 Copyright (C) 2005 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 1.10.
10 ** Wget now supports the --ftp-user and --ftp-password command switches to set
11 username and password for FTP, and the --user and --password command switches
12 to set username and password for both FTP and HTTP. The --http-passwd and
13 --proxy-passwd command switches have been renamed to --http-password and
14 --proxy-password respectively, and the related http_passwd and proxy_passwd
15 .wgetrc commands to http_password and proxy_password respectively. The
16 login and passwd .wgetrc commands have been deprecated.
18 ** Downloading files greater than 2GB, also known as "large files",
19 now works on systems that support them. This includes most modern
20 Unix variants, as well as Windows.
22 ** IPv6 is now supported by Wget. Unlike the experimental code in
23 1.9, this version has no problems with dual-family systems. The new
24 flags `--inet4' and `--inet6' (or `-4' and `-6' for short) force the
25 use of IPv4 and IPv6 respectively. Unfortunately the IPv6 support
26 still does not work on Windows.
28 ** Talking to SSL servers over proxies now actually works. Previous
29 versions of Wget erroneously sent GET requests for SSL URLs. Wget
30 1.10 utilizes the CONNECT method designed for this purpose.
32 ** Microsoft's proprietary "NTLM" method of HTTP authentication is now
33 supported. This authentication method is undocumented and only used
34 by IIS. Note that *proxy* authentication is not supported in this
35 release; you can only authenticate to the target web site.
37 ** Wget no longer truncates partially downloaded files when download
38 has to start over because the server doesn't support Range. Instead,
39 with such servers Wget now simply ignores the data up to the byte
40 where the last attempt left off, and only then continues appending to
41 the file. That way the downloaded file never shrinks, and download
42 retries from servers without support for partial downloads work even
43 when downloading to stdout.
45 ** Passive FTP is now the default FTP transfer mode. Use
46 `--no-passive-ftp' or specify `passive_ftp = off' in your init file to
47 revert to the old behavior.
49 ** The `--header' option can now be used to override generated
50 headers. For example, `wget --header="Host: foo.bar"
51 http://127.0.0.1' tells Wget to connect to localhost, but to specify
52 "foo.bar" in the `Host' header. In previous versions such use of
53 `--header' lead to duplicate headers in HTTP requests.
55 ** The responses without headers, aka "HTTP 0.9" responses, are
56 detected and handled. Although HTTP 0.9 has long been obsolete, it is
57 still occasionally used, sometimes by accident.
59 ** The progress bar is now updated regularly even when the data does
60 not arrive from the network.
62 ** Wget no longer preserves permissions of files retrieved by FTP by
63 default. Anonymous FTP servers frequently use permissions like "664",
64 which might not be what the user wants. The new option
65 `--preserve-permissions' and the corresponding `.wgetrc' variable can
66 be used to revert to the old behavior.
68 ** The new option `--protocol-directories' instructs Wget to also use
69 the protocol name as a directory component of local file names.
71 ** Many options that previously unconditionally set or unset various
72 flags are now boolean options that can be invoked as either `--OPTION'
73 or `--no-OPTION'. Options that required an argument "on" or "off"
74 have also been changed this way, but they still accept the old syntax
75 for backward compatibility. For example, instead of `--glob=off' you
76 can write `--no-glob'.
78 Allowing `--no-OPTION' for every `--OPTION' and the other way around
79 is useful because it allows the user to override non-default behavior
80 specified via `.wgetrc'.
82 ** The new option `--keep-session-cookies' causes `--save-cookies' to
83 save session cookies (normally only kept in memory) along with the
84 permanent ones. Many sites track important information, such as
85 whether the user has authenticated, using session cookies. Using this
86 option option allows multiple Wget runs to be treated as a single
89 * `wget -b' now works correctly under Windows.
91 * Wget 1.9.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
93 * Changes in Wget 1.9.
95 ** It is now possible to specify that POST method be used for HTTP
96 requests. For example, `wget --post-data="id=foo&data=bar" URL' will
97 send a POST request with the specified contents.
99 ** IPv6 support is available, although it's still experimental.
101 ** The `--timeout' option now also affects DNS lookup and establishing
102 the TCP connection. Previously it only affected reading and writing
103 data. Those three timeouts can be set separately using
104 `--dns-timeout', `--connection-timeout', and `--read-timeout',
107 ** Download speed shown by the progress bar is based on the data
108 recently read, rather than the average speed of the entire download.
109 The ETA projection is still based on the overall average.
111 ** It is now possible to connect to FTP servers through FWTK
112 firewalls. Set ftp_proxy to an FTP URL, and Wget will automatically
113 log on to the proxy as "username@host".
115 ** The new option `--retry-connrefused' makes Wget retry downloads
116 even in the face of refused connections, which are otherwise
117 considered a fatal error.
119 ** The new option `--dns-cache=off' may be used to prevent Wget from
122 ** Wget no longer escapes characters in local file names based on
123 whether they're appropriate in URLs. Escaping can still occur for
124 nonprintable characters or for '/', but no longer for frequent
125 characters such as space. You can use the new option
126 --restrict-file-names to relax or strengthen these rules, which can be
127 useful if you dislike the default or if you're downloading to
128 non-native partitions.
130 ** Handling of HTML comments has been dumbed down to conform to what
131 users expect and other browsers do: instead of being treated as SGML
132 declaration, a comment is terminated at the first occurrence of "-->".
133 Use `--strict-comments' to revert to the old behavior.
135 ** Wget now correctly handles relative URIs that begin with "//", such
136 as "//img.foo.com/foo.jpg".
138 ** Boolean options in `.wgetrc' and on the command line now accept
139 values "yes" and "no" along with the traditional "on" and "off".
141 ** It is now possible to specify decimal values for timeouts, waiting
142 periods, and download rate. For instance, `--wait=0.5' now works as
143 expected, as does `--dns-timeout=0.5' and even `--limit-rate=2.5k'.
145 * Wget 1.8.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
147 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
149 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
151 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
152 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
153 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
154 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
155 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
157 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
158 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
159 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
162 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
164 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
165 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
166 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
169 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
170 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
171 have been downloaded.
173 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
174 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
175 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
177 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
178 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
179 are now converted correctly.
181 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
182 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
185 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
186 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
187 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
189 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
190 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
193 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
194 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
196 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
199 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
200 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
202 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
203 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
204 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
205 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
207 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
209 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
211 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
213 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
214 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
217 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
218 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
219 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
221 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
222 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
223 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
224 stressing for the server and the network.
226 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
229 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
230 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
232 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
233 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
236 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
237 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
238 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
239 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
242 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
244 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
245 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
246 large sites (thousands of documents).
248 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
249 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
250 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
251 distribution installed on your system.
253 * Changes in Wget 1.6
255 ** Administrative changes.
257 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
258 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
259 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
260 are being helped by many other people.
262 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
265 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
267 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
268 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
269 the web page for downloading instructions.
271 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
272 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
273 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
275 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
276 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
277 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
278 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
280 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
281 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
282 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
283 default in the system wgetrc.
285 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
286 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
287 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
289 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
290 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
291 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
293 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
294 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
295 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
297 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
299 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
300 bound to multiple IP addresses.
302 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
304 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
306 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
308 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
310 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
312 ** Wget speaks many languages!
314 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
315 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
316 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
318 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
320 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
322 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
324 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
326 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
327 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
329 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
332 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
333 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
335 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
338 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
339 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
342 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
344 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
345 standards set by other GNU utilities.
347 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
348 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
350 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
353 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
354 distributed with Wget.
356 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
358 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
360 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
362 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
364 ** Can do passive FTP.
368 ** Info documentation expanded.
370 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
372 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
376 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
378 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
379 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
381 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
383 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
385 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
388 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
390 ** --convert-links should work now.
394 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
398 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
400 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
402 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
404 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
405 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
406 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
407 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
408 most importantly, use.
410 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
411 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
413 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
414 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
415 wget http://user:password@hostname/
417 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
418 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
419 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
421 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
422 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
424 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
425 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
427 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
429 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
430 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
432 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
435 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
436 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
439 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
440 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
441 sysadmin to like you).
443 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
445 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
448 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
449 through a proxy server.
451 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
452 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
454 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
457 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
458 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
460 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
462 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
464 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
466 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
467 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
469 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
470 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
472 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
474 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
475 turn on mirroring options).
477 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
479 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
481 ** A host of bugfixes.
483 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
485 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
487 ** Added support for no_proxy
489 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
491 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
493 ** More natural command-line options
495 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
497 ** Added support for robots.txt
499 ** Fixed some minor bugs
501 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
503 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
505 ** REST supported in FTP
507 ** Proxy servers supported
509 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
510 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
511 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
513 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
515 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
517 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
519 ** autoconf supported
521 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
522 Copyright information:
524 Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
526 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
527 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
528 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
529 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
531 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
532 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
533 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last