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 ** Downloading files greater than 2GB, also known as "large files",
11 now works on systems that support them. This includes most modern
12 Unix variants, as well as Windows.
14 ** IPv6 is now supported by Wget. Unlike the experimental code in
15 1.9, this version has no problems with dual-family systems. The new
16 flags `--inet4' and `--inet6' (or `-4' and `-6' for short) force the
17 use of IPv4 and IPv6 respectively. Unfortunately the IPv6 support
18 still does not work on Windows.
20 ** Talking to SSL servers over proxies now actually works. Previous
21 versions of Wget erroneously sent GET requests for SSL URLs. Wget
22 1.10 utilizes the CONNECT method designed for this purpose.
24 ** Microsoft's proprietary "NTLM" method of HTTP authentication is now
25 supported. This authentication method is undocumented and only used
26 by IIS. Note that *proxy* authentication is not supported in this
27 release; you can only authenticate to the target web site.
29 ** Wget no longer truncates partially downloaded files when download
30 has to start over because the server doesn't support Range. Instead,
31 with such servers Wget now simply ignores the data up to the byte
32 where the last attempt left off, and only then continues appending to
33 the file. That way the downloaded file never shrinks, and download
34 retries from servers without support for partial downloads work even
35 when downloading to stdout.
37 ** Passive FTP is now the default FTP transfer mode. Use
38 `--no-passive-ftp' or specify `passive_ftp = off' in your init file to
39 revert to the old behavior.
41 ** The `--header' option can now be used to override generated
42 headers. For example, `wget --header="Host: foo.bar"
43 http://127.0.0.1' tells Wget to connect to localhost, but to specify
44 "foo.bar" in the `Host' header. In previous versions such use of
45 `--header' lead to duplicate headers in HTTP requests.
47 ** The responses without headers, aka "HTTP 0.9" responses, are
48 detected and handled. Although HTTP 0.9 has long been obsolete, it is
49 still occasionally used, sometimes by accident.
51 ** The progress bar is now updated regularly even when the data does
52 not arrive from the network.
54 ** Wget no longer preserves permissions of files retrieved by FTP by
55 default. Anonymous FTP servers frequently use permissions like "664",
56 which might not be what the user wants. The new option
57 `--preserve-permissions' and the corresponding `.wgetrc' variable can
58 be used to revert to the old behavior.
60 ** The new option `--protocol-directories' instructs Wget to also use
61 the protocol name as a directory component of local file names.
63 ** Many options that previously unconditionally set or unset various
64 flags are now boolean options that can be invoked as either `--OPTION'
65 or `--no-OPTION'. Options that required an argument "on" or "off"
66 have also been changed this way, but they still accept the old syntax
67 for backward compatibility. For example, instead of `--glob=off' you
68 can write `--no-glob'.
70 Allowing `--no-OPTION' for every `--OPTION' and the other way around
71 is useful because it allows the user to override non-default behavior
72 specified via `.wgetrc'.
74 ** The new option `--keep-session-cookies' causes `--save-cookies' to
75 save session cookies (normally only kept in memory) along with the
76 permanent ones. This is useful because many sites track important
77 information, such as whether the user has authenticated, in session
78 cookies. With this option multiple Wget runs are treated as a single
81 ** Wget now supports the --ftp-user and --ftp-password command
82 switches to set username and password for FTP, and the --user and
83 --password command switches to set username and password for both FTP
84 and HTTP. The --http-passwd and --proxy-passwd command switches have
85 been renamed to --http-password and --proxy-password respectively, and
86 the related http_passwd and proxy_passwd .wgetrc commands to
87 http_password and proxy_password respectively. The login and passwd
88 .wgetrc commands have been deprecated.
90 * `wget -b' now works correctly under Windows.
92 * Wget 1.9.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
94 * Changes in Wget 1.9.
96 ** It is now possible to specify that POST method be used for HTTP
97 requests. For example, `wget --post-data="id=foo&data=bar" URL' will
98 send a POST request with the specified contents.
100 ** IPv6 support is available, although it's still experimental.
102 ** The `--timeout' option now also affects DNS lookup and establishing
103 the TCP connection. Previously it only affected reading and writing
104 data. Those three timeouts can be set separately using
105 `--dns-timeout', `--connection-timeout', and `--read-timeout',
108 ** Download speed shown by the progress bar is based on the data
109 recently read, rather than the average speed of the entire download.
110 The ETA projection is still based on the overall average.
112 ** It is now possible to connect to FTP servers through FWTK
113 firewalls. Set ftp_proxy to an FTP URL, and Wget will automatically
114 log on to the proxy as "username@host".
116 ** The new option `--retry-connrefused' makes Wget retry downloads
117 even in the face of refused connections, which are otherwise
118 considered a fatal error.
120 ** The new option `--dns-cache=off' may be used to prevent Wget from
123 ** Wget no longer escapes characters in local file names based on
124 whether they're appropriate in URLs. Escaping can still occur for
125 nonprintable characters or for '/', but no longer for frequent
126 characters such as space. You can use the new option
127 --restrict-file-names to relax or strengthen these rules, which can be
128 useful if you dislike the default or if you're downloading to
129 non-native partitions.
131 ** Handling of HTML comments has been dumbed down to conform to what
132 users expect and other browsers do: instead of being treated as SGML
133 declaration, a comment is terminated at the first occurrence of "-->".
134 Use `--strict-comments' to revert to the old behavior.
136 ** Wget now correctly handles relative URIs that begin with "//", such
137 as "//img.foo.com/foo.jpg".
139 ** Boolean options in `.wgetrc' and on the command line now accept
140 values "yes" and "no" along with the traditional "on" and "off".
142 ** It is now possible to specify decimal values for timeouts, waiting
143 periods, and download rate. For instance, `--wait=0.5' now works as
144 expected, as does `--dns-timeout=0.5' and even `--limit-rate=2.5k'.
146 * Wget 1.8.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
148 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
150 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
152 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
153 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
154 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
155 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
156 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
158 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
159 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
160 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
163 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
165 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
166 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
167 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
170 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
171 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
172 have been downloaded.
174 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
175 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
176 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
178 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
179 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
180 are now converted correctly.
182 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
183 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
186 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
187 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
188 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
190 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
191 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
194 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
195 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
197 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
200 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
201 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
203 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
204 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
205 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
206 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
208 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
210 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
212 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
214 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
215 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
218 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
219 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
220 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
222 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
223 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
224 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
225 stressing for the server and the network.
227 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
230 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
231 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
233 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
234 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
237 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
238 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
239 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
240 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
243 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
245 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
246 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
247 large sites (thousands of documents).
249 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
250 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
251 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
252 distribution installed on your system.
254 * Changes in Wget 1.6
256 ** Administrative changes.
258 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
259 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
260 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
261 are being helped by many other people.
263 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
266 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
268 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
269 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
270 the web page for downloading instructions.
272 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
273 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
274 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
276 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
277 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
278 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
279 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
281 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
282 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
283 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
284 default in the system wgetrc.
286 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
287 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
288 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
290 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
291 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
292 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
294 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
295 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
296 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
298 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
300 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
301 bound to multiple IP addresses.
303 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
305 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
307 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
309 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
311 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
313 ** Wget speaks many languages!
315 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
316 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
317 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
319 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
321 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
323 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
325 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
327 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
328 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
330 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
333 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
334 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
336 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
339 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
340 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
343 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
345 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
346 standards set by other GNU utilities.
348 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
349 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
351 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
354 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
355 distributed with Wget.
357 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
359 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
361 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
363 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
365 ** Can do passive FTP.
369 ** Info documentation expanded.
371 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
373 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
377 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
379 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
380 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
382 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
384 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
386 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
389 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
391 ** --convert-links should work now.
395 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
399 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
401 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
403 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
405 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
406 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
407 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
408 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
409 most importantly, use.
411 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
412 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
414 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
415 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
416 wget http://user:password@hostname/
418 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
419 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
420 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
422 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
423 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
425 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
426 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
428 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
430 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
431 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
433 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
436 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
437 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
440 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
441 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
442 sysadmin to like you).
444 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
446 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
449 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
450 through a proxy server.
452 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
453 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
455 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
458 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
459 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
461 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
463 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
465 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
467 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
468 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
470 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
471 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
473 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
475 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
476 turn on mirroring options).
478 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
480 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
482 ** A host of bugfixes.
484 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
486 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
488 ** Added support for no_proxy
490 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
492 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
494 ** More natural command-line options
496 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
498 ** Added support for robots.txt
500 ** Fixed some minor bugs
502 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
504 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
506 ** REST supported in FTP
508 ** Proxy servers supported
510 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
511 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
512 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
514 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
516 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
518 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
520 ** autoconf supported
522 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
523 Copyright information:
525 Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
527 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
528 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
529 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
530 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
532 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
533 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
534 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last