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 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
11 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
12 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
13 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
14 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
16 ** You can limit the bandwidth spent by the retrieval using the
17 `--limit-rate' option. For example, "wget --limit-rate=15k URL" will
18 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
21 ** "Recursive retrieval" has been revamped:
23 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
24 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
25 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
28 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
29 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
32 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
33 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
34 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
36 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
39 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
40 <http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/norobots-rfc.html>.
42 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
43 quoting bug. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F'
44 is no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
45 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
47 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
49 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
51 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
52 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
55 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
56 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
57 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
59 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
60 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
61 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
62 stressing for the server and the network.
64 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
67 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
68 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
70 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
71 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
74 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
75 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
76 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
77 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
80 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
82 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
83 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
84 large sites (thousands of documents).
86 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
87 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
88 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
89 distribution installed on your system.
93 ** Administrative changes.
95 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
96 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
97 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
98 are being helped by many other people.
100 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
103 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
105 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
106 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
107 the web page for downloading instructions.
109 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
110 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
111 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
113 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
114 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
115 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
116 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
118 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
119 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
120 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
121 default in the system wgetrc.
123 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
124 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
125 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
127 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
128 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
129 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
131 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
132 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
133 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
135 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
137 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
138 bound to multiple IP addresses.
140 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
142 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
144 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
146 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
148 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
150 ** Wget speaks many languages!
152 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
153 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
154 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
156 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
158 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
160 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
162 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
164 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
165 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
167 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
170 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
171 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
173 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
176 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
177 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
180 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
182 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
183 standards set by other GNU utilities.
185 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
186 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
188 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
191 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
192 distributed with Wget.
194 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
196 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
198 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
200 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
202 ** Can do passive FTP.
206 ** Info documentation expanded.
208 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
210 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
214 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
216 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
217 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
219 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
221 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
223 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
226 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
228 ** --convert-links should work now.
232 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
236 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
238 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
240 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
242 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
243 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
244 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
245 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
246 most importantly, use.
248 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
249 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
251 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
252 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
253 wget http://user:password@hostname/
255 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
256 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
257 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
259 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
260 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
262 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
263 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
265 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
267 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
268 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
270 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
273 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
274 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
277 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
278 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
279 sysadmin to like you).
281 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
283 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
286 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
287 through a proxy server.
289 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
290 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
292 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
295 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
296 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
298 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
300 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
302 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
304 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
305 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
307 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
308 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
310 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
312 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
313 turn on mirroring options).
315 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
317 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
319 ** A host of bugfixes.
321 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
323 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
325 ** Added support for no_proxy
327 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
329 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
331 ** More natural command-line options
333 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
335 ** Added support for robots.txt
337 ** Fixed some minor bugs
339 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
341 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
343 ** REST supported in FTP
345 ** Proxy servers supported
347 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
348 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
349 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
351 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
353 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
355 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
357 ** autoconf supported
359 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
360 Copyright information:
362 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
364 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
365 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
366 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
367 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
369 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
370 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
371 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last