1 GNU Wget NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
3 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,
4 2006, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
5 See the end for copying conditions.
7 Please send GNU Wget bug reports to <bug-wget@gnu.org>.
9 * Changes in Wget 1.11.
11 ** TODO file removed: we use a bugtracker now; see
12 http://wget.addictivecode.org/BugTracker. Also,
13 http://wget.addictivecode.org/FeatureSpecifications.
15 ** Timestamping now uses the value from the most recent HTTP response,
16 rather than the first one it got.
18 ** configure.in now requires autoconf >= 2.61, rather than 2.59.
20 ** Authentication information is no longer sent as part of the Referer
21 header in recursive fetches.
23 ** No authentication credentials are sent until a challenge is issued,
24 for improved security. Authentication handling is still not
25 RFC-compliant, as once a Basic challenge has been received, it will
26 assume it can send credentials to any URL at that same host, and not
27 just the ones at or below the original authenticated location.
28 Credentials for Digest authentication are still never saved or issued
29 automatically, and continue to require a challenge for each resource.
31 ** Added --max-redirect option, allowing the user to specify what should
32 be the maximum number of HTTP redirects to follow.
34 ** Wget now saves HTTP downloads using file names specified by the
35 `Content-Disposition' header. This is a standard way of specifying the
36 file name used by many web dynamically generated pages. For the time
37 being, Content-Disposition is not used by default, to avoid the extra
38 round-trips incurred (must specify "-e contentdisposition=yes"); this
39 may change in a future version.
41 ** The GnuTLS library is now also supported for https downloads.
42 This is still work-in-progress. OpenSSL is still used by default; use
43 --with-ssl=gnutls to build with GnuTLS. OpenSSL is still required for
44 NTLM authorization to work, but this should eventually change.
46 ** The new option `--ignore-case' makes Wget ignore case when
47 matching files, directories, and wildcards. This affects the -X, -I,
48 -A, and -R options, as well as globbing in FTP URLs.
50 ** ETA projection is now displayed in "dot" progress output as well as
51 in the default progress bar. (The dot progress is used by default when
52 logging Wget's output to file using the `-o' option.)
54 ** The "lockable boolean" argument type is no longer supported. It
55 was only used by the passive_ftp .wgetrc setting. If you're running
56 broken scripts or Perl modules that unconditionally specify
57 `--passive-ftp' and your firewall disallows it, you can override them
58 by replacing wget with a script that execs wget "$@" --no-passive-ftp.
60 ** The source code has migrated from CVS to Subversion. The
61 repository is available at http://svn.dotsrc.org/repo/wget/; to
62 checkout the trunk to a directory named `wget', use something like
63 `svn checkout http://svn.dotsrc.org/repo/wget/trunk/ wget'.
65 * Changes in Wget 1.10.
67 ** Downloading files larger than 2GB, sometimes referred to as "large
68 files", now works on systems that support them. This includes the
69 majority of modern Unixes, as well as MS Windows.
71 ** IPv6 is now supported by Wget. Unlike the experimental code in
72 1.9, this version supports dual-family systems. The new flags
73 `--inet4' and `--inet6' (or `-4' and `-6' for short) force the use of
74 IPv4 and IPv6 respectively. Note that IPv6 support has not yet been
77 ** Microsoft's proprietary "NTLM" method of HTTP authentication is now
78 supported. This authentication method is undocumented and only used
79 by IIS. Note that *proxy* authentication is not supported in this
80 release; you can only authenticate to the target web site.
82 ** Wget no longer truncates partially downloaded files when download
83 has to start over because the server doesn't support Range. Instead,
84 with such servers Wget now simply ignores the data up to the byte
85 where the last attempt left off, and only then continues appending to
86 the file. That way the downloaded file never shrinks, and download
87 retries from servers without support for partial downloads work even
88 when downloading to stdout.
92 *** SSL/TLS downloads now attempt to verify the server's certificate
93 against the recognized certificate authorities. This requires CA
94 certificates to have been installed in a location visible to the
95 OpenSSL library. If this is not the case, you can get the bundle
96 yourself from a source you trust (for example, the bundle extracted
97 from Mozilla available at http://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html),
98 and point Wget to the PEM file using the `--ca-certificate'
99 command-line option or the corresponding `.wgetrc' command.
101 *** Secure downloads now verify that the host name in the URL matches
102 the "common name" in the certificate presented by the server.
104 *** Although the above checks provide more secure downloads, they
105 unavoidably break interoperability with some sites that worked with
106 previous versions, particularly those using self-signed, expired, or
107 otherwise invalid certificates. If you encounter "certificate
108 verification" errors or complaints that "common name doesn't match
109 requested host name" and are convinced of the site's authenticity, you
110 can use `--no-check-certificate' to bypass both checks.
112 *** Talking to SSL/TLS servers over proxies now actually works.
113 Previous versions of Wget erroneously sent GET requests for https
114 URLs. Wget 1.10 utilizes the CONNECT method designed for this
117 *** The SSL/TLS-related options have been redesigned and, for the
118 first time, documented in the manual. The old, undocumented, options
119 are no longer supported.
121 ** Passive FTP is now the default FTP transfer mode. Use
122 `--no-passive-ftp' or specify `passive_ftp = off' in your init file to
123 revert to the old behavior.
125 ** The `--header' option can now be used to override generated
126 headers. For example, `wget --header="Host: foo.bar"
127 http://127.0.0.1' tells Wget to connect to localhost, but to specify
128 "foo.bar" in the `Host' header. In previous versions such use of
129 `--header' lead to duplicate headers in HTTP requests.
131 ** The responses without headers, aka "HTTP 0.9" responses, are
132 detected and handled. Although HTTP 0.9 has long been obsolete, it is
133 still occasionally used, sometimes by accident.
135 ** The progress bar is now updated regularly even when the data does
136 not arrive from the network.
138 ** Wget no longer preserves permissions of files retrieved by FTP by
139 default. Anonymous FTP servers frequently use permissions like "664",
140 which might not be what the user wants. The new option
141 `--preserve-permissions' and the corresponding `.wgetrc' variable can
142 be used to revert to the old behavior.
144 ** The new option `--protocol-directories' instructs Wget to also use
145 the protocol name as a directory component of local file names.
147 ** Options that previously unconditionally set or unset various flags
148 are now boolean options that can be invoked as either `--OPTION' or
149 `--no-OPTION'. Options that required an argument "on" or "off" have
150 also been changed this way, but they still accept the old syntax for
151 backward compatibility. For example, instead of `--glob=off' you can
154 Allowing `--no-OPTION' for every `--OPTION' and the other way around
155 is useful because it allows the user to override non-default behavior
156 specified via `.wgetrc'.
158 ** The new option `--keep-session-cookies' causes `--save-cookies' to
159 save session cookies (normally only kept in memory) along with the
160 permanent ones. This is useful because many sites track important
161 information, such as whether the user has authenticated, in session
162 cookies. With this option multiple Wget runs are treated as a single
165 ** Wget now supports the --ftp-user and --ftp-password command
166 switches to set username and password for FTP, and the --user and
167 --password command switches to set username and password for both FTP
168 and HTTP. The --http-passwd and --proxy-passwd command switches have
169 been renamed to --http-password and --proxy-password respectively, and
170 the related http_passwd and proxy_passwd .wgetrc commands to
171 http_password and proxy_password respectively. The login and passwd
172 .wgetrc commands have been deprecated.
174 * `wget -b' now works correctly under Windows.
176 * Wget 1.9.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
178 * Changes in Wget 1.9.
180 ** It is now possible to specify that POST method be used for HTTP
181 requests. For example, `wget --post-data="id=foo&data=bar" URL' will
182 send a POST request with the specified contents.
184 ** IPv6 support is available, although it's still experimental.
186 ** The `--timeout' option now also affects DNS lookup and establishing
187 the TCP connection. Previously it only affected reading and writing
188 data. Those three timeouts can be set separately using
189 `--dns-timeout', `--connection-timeout', and `--read-timeout',
192 ** Download speed shown by the progress bar is based on the data
193 recently read, rather than the average speed of the entire download.
194 The ETA projection is still based on the overall average.
196 ** It is now possible to connect to FTP servers through FWTK
197 firewalls. Set ftp_proxy to an FTP URL, and Wget will automatically
198 log on to the proxy as "username@host".
200 ** The new option `--retry-connrefused' makes Wget retry downloads
201 even in the face of refused connections, which are otherwise
202 considered a fatal error.
204 ** The new option `--no-dns-cache' may be used to prevent Wget from
207 ** Wget no longer escapes characters in local file names based on
208 whether they're appropriate in URLs. Escaping can still occur for
209 nonprintable characters or for '/', but no longer for frequent
210 characters such as space. You can use the new option
211 --restrict-file-names to relax or strengthen these rules, which can be
212 useful if you dislike the default or if you're downloading to
213 non-native partitions.
215 ** Handling of HTML comments has been dumbed down to conform to what
216 users expect and other browsers do: instead of being treated as SGML
217 declaration, a comment is terminated at the first occurrence of "-->".
218 Use `--strict-comments' to revert to the old behavior.
220 ** Wget now correctly handles relative URIs that begin with "//", such
221 as "//img.foo.com/foo.jpg".
223 ** Boolean options in `.wgetrc' and on the command line now accept
224 values "yes" and "no" along with the traditional "on" and "off".
226 ** It is now possible to specify decimal values for timeouts, waiting
227 periods, and download rate. For instance, `--wait=0.5' now works as
228 expected, as does `--dns-timeout=0.5' and even `--limit-rate=2.5k'.
230 * Wget 1.8.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
232 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
234 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
236 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
237 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
238 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
239 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
240 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
242 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
243 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
244 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
247 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
249 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
250 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
251 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
254 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
255 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
256 have been downloaded.
258 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
259 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
260 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
262 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
263 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
264 are now converted correctly.
266 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
267 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
270 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
271 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
272 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
274 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
275 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
278 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
279 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
281 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
284 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
285 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
287 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
288 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
289 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
290 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
292 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
294 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
296 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
298 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
299 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
302 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
303 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
304 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
306 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
307 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
308 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
309 stressing for the server and the network.
311 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
314 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
315 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
317 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
318 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
321 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
322 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
323 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
324 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
327 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
329 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
330 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
331 large sites (thousands of documents).
333 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
334 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
335 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
336 distribution installed on your system.
338 * Changes in Wget 1.6
340 ** Administrative changes.
342 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
343 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
344 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
345 are being helped by many other people.
347 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
350 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
352 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
353 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
354 the web page for downloading instructions.
356 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
357 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
358 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
360 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
361 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
362 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
363 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
365 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
366 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
367 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
368 default in the system wgetrc.
370 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
371 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
372 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
374 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
375 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
376 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
378 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
379 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
380 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
382 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
384 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
385 bound to multiple IP addresses.
387 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
389 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
391 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
393 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
395 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
397 ** Wget speaks many languages!
399 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
400 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
401 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
403 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
405 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
407 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
409 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
411 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
412 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
414 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
417 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
418 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
420 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
423 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
424 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
427 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
429 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
430 standards set by other GNU utilities.
432 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
433 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
435 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
438 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
439 distributed with Wget.
441 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
443 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
445 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
447 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
449 ** Can do passive FTP.
453 ** Info documentation expanded.
455 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
457 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
461 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
463 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
464 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
466 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
468 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
470 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
473 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
475 ** --convert-links should work now.
479 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
483 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
485 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
487 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
489 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
490 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
491 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
492 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
493 most importantly, use.
495 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
496 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
498 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
499 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
500 wget http://user:password@hostname/
502 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
503 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
504 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
506 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
507 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
509 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
510 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
512 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
514 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
515 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
517 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
520 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
521 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
524 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
525 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
526 sysadmin to like you).
528 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
530 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
533 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
534 through a proxy server.
536 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
537 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
539 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
542 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
543 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
545 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
547 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
549 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
551 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
552 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
554 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
555 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
557 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
559 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
560 turn on mirroring options).
562 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
564 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
566 ** A host of bugfixes.
568 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
570 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
572 ** Added support for no_proxy
574 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
576 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
578 ** More natural command-line options
580 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
582 ** Added support for robots.txt
584 ** Fixed some minor bugs
586 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
588 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
590 ** REST supported in FTP
592 ** Proxy servers supported
594 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
595 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
596 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
598 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
600 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
602 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
604 ** autoconf supported
606 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
607 Copyright information:
609 Copyright (C) 1997-2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
611 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
612 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
613 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
614 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
616 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
617 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
618 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last