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