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>.
10 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
11 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
14 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported. This
15 means that multiple requests from the same hosts are now much faster.
17 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
20 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
21 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
23 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
24 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
25 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
26 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
29 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
31 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
32 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
33 large sites (thousands of documents).
35 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
36 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
37 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
38 distribution installed on your system.
42 ** Administrative changes.
44 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
45 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
46 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
47 are being helped by many other people.
49 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
52 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
54 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
55 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
56 the web page for downloading instructions.
58 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
59 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
60 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
62 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
63 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
64 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
65 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
67 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
68 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
69 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
70 default in the system wgetrc.
72 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
73 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
74 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
76 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
77 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
78 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
80 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
81 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
82 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
84 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
86 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
87 bound to multiple IP addresses.
89 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
91 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
93 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
95 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
97 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
99 ** Wget speaks many languages!
101 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
102 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
103 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
105 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
107 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
109 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
111 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
113 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
114 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
116 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
119 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
120 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
122 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
125 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
126 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
129 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
131 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
132 standards set by other GNU utilities.
134 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
135 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
137 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
140 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
141 distributed with Wget.
143 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
145 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
147 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
149 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
151 ** Can do passive FTP.
155 ** Info documentation expanded.
157 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
159 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
163 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
165 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
166 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
168 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
170 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
172 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
175 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
177 ** --convert-links should work now.
181 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
185 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
187 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
189 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
191 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
192 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
193 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
194 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
195 most importantly, use.
197 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
198 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
200 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
201 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
202 wget http://user:password@hostname/
204 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
205 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
206 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
208 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
209 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
211 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
212 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
214 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
216 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
217 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
219 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
222 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
223 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
226 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
227 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
228 sysadmin to like you).
230 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
232 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
235 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
236 through a proxy server.
238 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
239 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
241 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
244 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
245 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
247 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
249 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
251 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
253 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
254 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
256 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
257 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
259 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
261 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
262 turn on mirroring options).
264 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
266 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
268 ** A host of bugfixes.
270 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
272 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
274 ** Added support for no_proxy
276 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
278 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
280 ** More natural command-line options
282 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
284 ** Added support for robots.txt
286 ** Fixed some minor bugs
288 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
290 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
292 ** REST supported in FTP
294 ** Proxy servers supported
296 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
297 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
298 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
300 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
302 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
304 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
306 ** autoconf supported
308 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
309 Copyright information:
311 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
313 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
314 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
315 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
316 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
318 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
319 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
320 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last