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 * Changes in Wget 1.7-dev
10 ** Wget can now recognize FTP directory listings from some non-Unix
11 servers. Currently Windows NT is supported.
13 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
14 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
16 ** "Keep-Alive" connections are now supported.
18 ** https (SSL) URLs are now supported if you link wget with OpenSSL.
20 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
21 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
22 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
23 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
26 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
28 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
29 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
30 large sites (thousands of documents).
32 ** Wget now mmaps the files it needs to read instead of allocating
33 heap memory to read them.
37 ** Administrative changes.
39 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
40 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
41 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
42 are being helped by many other people.
44 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
47 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
49 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
50 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
51 the web page for downloading instructions.
53 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
54 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
55 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
57 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
58 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
59 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
60 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
62 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
63 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
64 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
65 default in the system wgetrc.
67 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
68 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
69 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
71 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
72 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
73 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
75 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
76 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
77 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
79 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
81 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
82 bound to multiple IP addresses.
84 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
86 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
88 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
90 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
92 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
94 ** Wget speaks many languages!
96 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
97 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
98 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
100 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
102 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
104 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
106 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
108 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
109 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
111 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
114 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
115 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
117 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
120 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
121 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
124 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
126 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
127 standards set by other GNU utilities.
129 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
130 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
132 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
135 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
136 distributed with Wget.
138 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
140 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
142 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
144 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
146 ** Can do passive FTP.
150 ** Info documentation expanded.
152 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
154 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
158 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
160 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
161 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
163 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
165 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
167 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
170 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
172 ** --convert-links should work now.
176 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
180 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
182 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
184 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
186 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
187 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
188 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
189 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
190 most importantly, use.
192 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
193 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
195 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
196 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
197 wget http://user:password@hostname/
199 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
200 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
201 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
203 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
204 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
206 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
207 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
209 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
211 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
212 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
214 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
217 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
218 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
221 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
222 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
223 sysadmin to like you).
225 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
227 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
230 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
231 through a proxy server.
233 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
234 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
236 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
239 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
240 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
242 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
244 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
246 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
248 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
249 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
251 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
252 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
254 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
256 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
257 turn on mirroring options).
259 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
261 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
263 ** A host of bugfixes.
265 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
267 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
269 ** Added support for no_proxy
271 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
273 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
275 ** More natural command-line options
277 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
279 ** Added support for robots.txt
281 ** Fixed some minor bugs
283 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
285 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
287 ** REST supported in FTP
289 ** Proxy servers supported
291 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
292 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
293 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
295 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
297 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
299 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
301 ** autoconf supported
303 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
304 Copyright information:
306 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
308 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
309 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
310 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
311 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
313 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
314 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
315 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last