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