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 ** IPv6 is now supported by Wget. Unlike the experimental code in
11 1.9, this version has no problems with dual-family systems. The new
12 flags `--inet4' and `--inet6' (or `-4' and `-6' for short) force the
13 use of IPv4 and IPv6 respectively.
15 ** Talking to SSL servers over proxies now actually works.
17 ** The `--header' option can now be used to override generated
18 headers. For example, `wget --header="Host: foo.bar"
19 http://127.0.0.1' tells Wget to connect to localhost, but to specify
20 "foo.bar" in the `Host' header. In previous versions such use of
21 `--header' lead to duplicate headers in HTTP requests.
23 ** The responses without headers, aka "HTTP 0.9" responses, are
24 detected and handled. Although HTTP 0.9 has long been obsolete, it is
25 still occasionally used, sometimes by accident.
27 ** The progress bar is now updated regularly even when the data does
28 not arrive from the network.
30 ** Wget no longer preserves permissions of files retrieved by FTP by
31 default. Anonymous FTP servers frequently use permissions like "664",
32 which might not be what the user wants. The new option
33 `--preserve-permissions' and the corresponding `.wgetrc' variable can
34 be used to revert to the old behavior.
36 ** The new option `--protocol-directories' instructs Wget to also use
37 the protocol name as a directory component of local file names.
39 ** Many options that previously unconditionally set or unset various
40 flags are now boolean options that can be invoked as either `--OPTION'
41 or `--no-OPTION'. Options that required an argument "on" or "off"
42 have also been changed this way, but they still accept the old syntax
43 for backward compatibility. For example, instead of `--glob=off' you
44 can write `--no-glob'.
46 Allowing `--no-OPTION' for every `--OPTION' is useful because it
47 allows the user to override non-default behavior specified via
50 ** The new option `--keep-session-cookies' causes `--save-cookies' to
51 save session cookies along with the permanent ones. This is useful on
52 sites that require you to log in before you can access some pages.
53 With this option, multiple Wget runs will be treated as a single
56 * Wget 1.9.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
58 * Changes in Wget 1.9.
60 ** It is now possible to specify that POST method be used for HTTP
61 requests. For example, `wget --post-data="id=foo&data=bar" URL' will
62 send a POST request with the specified contents.
64 ** IPv6 support is available, although it's still experimental.
66 ** The `--timeout' option now also affects DNS lookup and establishing
67 the TCP connection. Previously it only affected reading and writing
68 data. Those three timeouts can be set separately using
69 `--dns-timeout', `--connection-timeout', and `--read-timeout',
72 ** Download speed shown by the progress bar is based on the data
73 recently read, rather than the average speed of the entire download.
74 The ETA projection is still based on the overall average.
76 ** It is now possible to connect to FTP servers through FWTK
77 firewalls. Set ftp_proxy to an FTP URL, and Wget will automatically
78 log on to the proxy as "username@host".
80 ** The new option `--retry-connrefused' makes Wget retry downloads
81 even in the face of refused connections, which are otherwise
82 considered a fatal error.
84 ** The new option `--dns-cache=off' may be used to prevent Wget from
87 ** Wget no longer escapes characters in local file names based on
88 whether they're appropriate in URLs. Escaping can still occur for
89 nonprintable characters or for '/', but no longer for frequent
90 characters such as space. You can use the new option
91 --restrict-file-names to relax or strengthen these rules, which can be
92 useful if you dislike the default or if you're downloading to
93 non-native partitions.
95 ** Handling of HTML comments has been dumbed down to conform to what
96 users expect and other browsers do: instead of being treated as SGML
97 declaration, a comment is terminated at the first occurrence of "-->".
98 Use `--strict-comments' to revert to the old behavior.
100 ** Wget now correctly handles relative URIs that begin with "//", such
101 as "//img.foo.com/foo.jpg".
103 ** Boolean options in `.wgetrc' and on the command line now accept
104 values "yes" and "no" along with the traditional "on" and "off".
106 ** It is now possible to specify decimal values for timeouts, waiting
107 periods, and download rate. For instance, `--wait=0.5' now works as
108 expected, as does `--dns-timeout=0.5' and even `--limit-rate=2.5k'.
110 * Wget 1.8.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
112 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
114 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
116 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
117 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
118 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
119 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
120 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
122 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
123 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
124 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
127 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
129 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
130 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
131 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
134 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
135 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
136 have been downloaded.
138 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
139 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
140 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
142 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
143 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
144 are now converted correctly.
146 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
147 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
150 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
151 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
152 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
154 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
155 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
158 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
159 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
161 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
164 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
165 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
167 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
168 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
169 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
170 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
172 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
174 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
176 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
178 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
179 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
182 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
183 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
184 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
186 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
187 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
188 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
189 stressing for the server and the network.
191 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
194 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
195 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
197 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
198 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
201 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
202 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
203 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
204 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
207 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
209 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
210 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
211 large sites (thousands of documents).
213 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
214 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
215 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
216 distribution installed on your system.
218 * Changes in Wget 1.6
220 ** Administrative changes.
222 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
223 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
224 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
225 are being helped by many other people.
227 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
230 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
232 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
233 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
234 the web page for downloading instructions.
236 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
237 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
238 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
240 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
241 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
242 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
243 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
245 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
246 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
247 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
248 default in the system wgetrc.
250 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
251 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
252 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
254 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
255 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
256 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
258 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
259 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
260 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
262 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
264 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
265 bound to multiple IP addresses.
267 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
269 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
271 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
273 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
275 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
277 ** Wget speaks many languages!
279 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
280 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
281 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
283 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
285 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
287 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
289 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
291 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
292 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
294 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
297 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
298 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
300 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
303 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
304 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
307 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
309 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
310 standards set by other GNU utilities.
312 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
313 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
315 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
318 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
319 distributed with Wget.
321 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
323 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
325 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
327 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
329 ** Can do passive FTP.
333 ** Info documentation expanded.
335 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
337 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
341 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
343 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
344 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
346 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
348 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
350 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
353 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
355 ** --convert-links should work now.
359 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
363 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
365 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
367 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
369 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
370 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
371 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
372 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
373 most importantly, use.
375 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
376 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
378 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
379 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
380 wget http://user:password@hostname/
382 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
383 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
384 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
386 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
387 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
389 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
390 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
392 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
394 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
395 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
397 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
400 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
401 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
404 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
405 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
406 sysadmin to like you).
408 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
410 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
413 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
414 through a proxy server.
416 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
417 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
419 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
422 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
423 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
425 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
427 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
429 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
431 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
432 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
434 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
435 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
437 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
439 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
440 turn on mirroring options).
442 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
444 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
446 ** A host of bugfixes.
448 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
450 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
452 ** Added support for no_proxy
454 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
456 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
458 ** More natural command-line options
460 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
462 ** Added support for robots.txt
464 ** Fixed some minor bugs
466 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
468 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
470 ** REST supported in FTP
472 ** Proxy servers supported
474 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
475 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
476 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
478 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
480 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
482 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
484 ** autoconf supported
486 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
487 Copyright information:
489 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
491 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
492 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
493 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
494 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
496 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
497 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
498 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last