1 GNU Wget NEWS -- history of user-visible changes.
3 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4 See the end for copying conditions.
6 Please send GNU Wget bug reports to <bug-wget@gnu.org>.
10 ** It is now possible to specify that POST method be used for HTTP
11 requests. For example, `wget --post-data="id=foo&data=bar" URL' will
12 send a POST request with the specified contents.
14 ** IPv6 support is available, although it's still experimental.
16 ** The `--timeout' option now also affects DNS lookup and establishing
17 the TCP connection. Previously it only affected reading and writing
18 data. Those three timeouts can be set separately using
19 `--dns-timeout', `--connection-timeout', and `--read-timeout',
22 ** Download speed shown by the progress bar is based on the data
23 recently read, rather than the average speed of the entire download.
24 The ETA projection is still based on the overall average.
26 ** It is now possible to connect to FTP servers through FWTK
27 firewalls. Set ftp_proxy to an FTP URL, and Wget will automatically
28 log on to the proxy as "username@host".
30 ** The new option `--retry-connrefused' makes Wget retry downloads
31 even in the face of refused connections, which are otherwise
32 considered a fatal error.
34 ** The new option `--dns-cache=off' may be used to prevent Wget from
37 ** Wget no longer escapes characters in local file names based on
38 whether they're appropriate in URLs. Escaping can still occur for
39 nonprintable characters or for '/', but no longer for frequent
40 characters such as space. You can use the new option
41 --restrict-file-names to relax or strengthen these rules, which can be
42 useful if you dislike the default or if you're downloading to
43 non-native partitions.
45 ** Handling of HTML comments has been dumbed down to conform to what
46 users expect and other browsers do: instead of being treated as SGML
47 declaration, a comment is terminated at the first occurrence of "-->".
48 Use `--strict-comments' to revert to the old behavior.
50 ** Wget now correctly handles relative URIs that begin with "//", such
51 as "//img.foo.com/foo.jpg".
53 ** Boolean options in `.wgetrc' and on the command line now accept
54 values "yes" and "no" along with the traditional "on" and "off".
56 ** It is now possible to specify decimal values for timeouts, waiting
57 periods, and download rate. For instance, `--wait=0.5' now works as
58 expected, as does `--dns-timeout=0.5' and even `--limit-rate=2.5k'.
60 * Wget 1.8.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
62 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
64 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
66 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
67 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
68 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
69 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
70 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
72 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
73 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
74 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
77 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
79 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
80 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
81 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
84 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
85 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
88 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
89 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
90 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
92 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
93 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
94 are now converted correctly.
96 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
97 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
100 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
101 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
102 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
104 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
105 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
108 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
109 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
111 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
114 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
115 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
117 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
118 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
119 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
120 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
122 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
124 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
126 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
128 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
129 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
132 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
133 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
134 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
136 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
137 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
138 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
139 stressing for the server and the network.
141 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
144 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
145 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
147 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
148 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
151 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
152 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
153 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
154 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
157 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
159 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
160 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
161 large sites (thousands of documents).
163 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
164 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
165 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
166 distribution installed on your system.
168 * Changes in Wget 1.6
170 ** Administrative changes.
172 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
173 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
174 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
175 are being helped by many other people.
177 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
180 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
182 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
183 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
184 the web page for downloading instructions.
186 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
187 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
188 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
190 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
191 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
192 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
193 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
195 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
196 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
197 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
198 default in the system wgetrc.
200 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
201 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
202 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
204 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
205 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
206 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
208 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
209 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
210 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
212 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
214 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
215 bound to multiple IP addresses.
217 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
219 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
221 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
223 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
225 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
227 ** Wget speaks many languages!
229 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
230 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
231 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
233 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
235 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
237 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
239 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
241 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
242 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
244 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
247 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
248 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
250 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
253 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
254 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
257 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
259 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
260 standards set by other GNU utilities.
262 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
263 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
265 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
268 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
269 distributed with Wget.
271 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
273 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
275 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
277 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
279 ** Can do passive FTP.
283 ** Info documentation expanded.
285 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
287 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
291 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
293 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
294 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
296 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
298 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
300 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
303 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
305 ** --convert-links should work now.
309 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
313 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
315 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
317 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
319 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
320 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
321 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
322 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
323 most importantly, use.
325 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
326 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
328 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
329 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
330 wget http://user:password@hostname/
332 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
333 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
334 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
336 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
337 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
339 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
340 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
342 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
344 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
345 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
347 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
350 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
351 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
354 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
355 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
356 sysadmin to like you).
358 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
360 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
363 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
364 through a proxy server.
366 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
367 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
369 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
372 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
373 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
375 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
377 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
379 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
381 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
382 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
384 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
385 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
387 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
389 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
390 turn on mirroring options).
392 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
394 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
396 ** A host of bugfixes.
398 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
400 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
402 ** Added support for no_proxy
404 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
406 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
408 ** More natural command-line options
410 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
412 ** Added support for robots.txt
414 ** Fixed some minor bugs
416 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
418 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
420 ** REST supported in FTP
422 ** Proxy servers supported
424 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
425 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
426 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
428 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
430 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
432 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
434 ** autoconf supported
436 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
437 Copyright information:
439 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
441 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
442 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
443 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
444 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
446 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
447 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
448 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last