1 GNU Wget NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
3 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end for copying conditions.
6 Please send GNU Wget bug reports to <bug-wget@gnu.org>.
8 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
10 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
12 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
13 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
14 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
15 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
16 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
18 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
19 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
20 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
23 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
25 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
26 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
27 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
30 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
31 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
34 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
35 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
36 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
38 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
39 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
40 are now converted correctly.
42 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
43 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
46 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
47 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
48 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
50 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
51 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
54 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
55 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
57 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
60 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
61 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
63 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
64 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
65 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
66 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
68 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
70 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
72 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
74 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
75 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
78 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
79 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
80 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
82 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
83 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
84 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
85 stressing for the server and the network.
87 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
90 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
91 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
93 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
94 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
97 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
98 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
99 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
100 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
103 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
105 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
106 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
107 large sites (thousands of documents).
109 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
110 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
111 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
112 distribution installed on your system.
114 * Changes in Wget 1.6
116 ** Administrative changes.
118 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
119 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
120 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
121 are being helped by many other people.
123 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
126 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
128 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
129 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
130 the web page for downloading instructions.
132 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
133 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
134 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
136 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
137 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
138 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
139 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
141 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
142 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
143 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
144 default in the system wgetrc.
146 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
147 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
148 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
150 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
151 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
152 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
154 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
155 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
156 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
158 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
160 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
161 bound to multiple IP addresses.
163 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
165 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
167 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
169 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
171 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
173 ** Wget speaks many languages!
175 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
176 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
177 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
179 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
181 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
183 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
185 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
187 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
188 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
190 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
193 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
194 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
196 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
199 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
200 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
203 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
205 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
206 standards set by other GNU utilities.
208 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
209 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
211 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
214 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
215 distributed with Wget.
217 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
219 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
221 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
223 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
225 ** Can do passive FTP.
229 ** Info documentation expanded.
231 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
233 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
237 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
239 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
240 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
242 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
244 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
246 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
249 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
251 ** --convert-links should work now.
255 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
259 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
261 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
263 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
265 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
266 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
267 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
268 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
269 most importantly, use.
271 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
272 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
274 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
275 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
276 wget http://user:password@hostname/
278 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
279 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
280 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
282 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
283 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
285 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
286 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
288 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
290 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
291 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
293 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
296 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
297 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
300 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
301 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
302 sysadmin to like you).
304 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
306 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
309 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
310 through a proxy server.
312 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
313 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
315 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
318 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
319 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
321 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
323 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
325 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
327 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
328 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
330 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
331 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
333 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
335 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
336 turn on mirroring options).
338 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
340 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
342 ** A host of bugfixes.
344 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
346 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
348 ** Added support for no_proxy
350 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
352 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
354 ** More natural command-line options
356 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
358 ** Added support for robots.txt
360 ** Fixed some minor bugs
362 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
364 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
366 ** REST supported in FTP
368 ** Proxy servers supported
370 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
371 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
372 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
374 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
376 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
378 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
380 ** autoconf supported
382 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
383 Copyright information:
385 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
387 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
388 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
389 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
390 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
392 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
393 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
394 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last