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>.
8 * Changes in Wget 1.9+.
10 ** IPv6 is now supported by Wget. Unlike the experimental code in
11 1.9, this version has no problems with dual-family systems. The new
12 flags `--inet4' and `--inet6' (or `-4' and `-6' for short) force the
13 use of IPv4 and IPv6 respectively.
15 ** Talking to SSL servers over proxies now actually works.
17 ** Wget no longer truncates partially downloaded files when download
18 has to start over because the server doesn't support Range. Instead,
19 with such servers Wget now simply ignores the data up to the byte
20 where the last attempt left off, and only then continues appending to
21 the file. That way the downloaded file never shrinks, and "start
22 over" retries work correctly even when downloading to stdout.
24 ** The `--header' option can now be used to override generated
25 headers. For example, `wget --header="Host: foo.bar"
26 http://127.0.0.1' tells Wget to connect to localhost, but to specify
27 "foo.bar" in the `Host' header. In previous versions such use of
28 `--header' lead to duplicate headers in HTTP requests.
30 ** The responses without headers, aka "HTTP 0.9" responses, are
31 detected and handled. Although HTTP 0.9 has long been obsolete, it is
32 still occasionally used, sometimes by accident.
34 ** The progress bar is now updated regularly even when the data does
35 not arrive from the network.
37 ** Wget no longer preserves permissions of files retrieved by FTP by
38 default. Anonymous FTP servers frequently use permissions like "664",
39 which might not be what the user wants. The new option
40 `--preserve-permissions' and the corresponding `.wgetrc' variable can
41 be used to revert to the old behavior.
43 ** The new option `--protocol-directories' instructs Wget to also use
44 the protocol name as a directory component of local file names.
46 ** Many options that previously unconditionally set or unset various
47 flags are now boolean options that can be invoked as either `--OPTION'
48 or `--no-OPTION'. Options that required an argument "on" or "off"
49 have also been changed this way, but they still accept the old syntax
50 for backward compatibility. For example, instead of `--glob=off' you
51 can write `--no-glob'.
53 Allowing `--no-OPTION' for every `--OPTION' is useful because it
54 allows the user to override non-default behavior specified via
57 ** The new option `--keep-session-cookies' causes `--save-cookies' to
58 save session cookies along with the permanent ones. This is useful on
59 sites that require you to log in before you can access some pages.
60 With this option, multiple Wget runs will be treated as a single
63 * Wget 1.9.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
65 * Changes in Wget 1.9.
67 ** It is now possible to specify that POST method be used for HTTP
68 requests. For example, `wget --post-data="id=foo&data=bar" URL' will
69 send a POST request with the specified contents.
71 ** IPv6 support is available, although it's still experimental.
73 ** The `--timeout' option now also affects DNS lookup and establishing
74 the TCP connection. Previously it only affected reading and writing
75 data. Those three timeouts can be set separately using
76 `--dns-timeout', `--connection-timeout', and `--read-timeout',
79 ** Download speed shown by the progress bar is based on the data
80 recently read, rather than the average speed of the entire download.
81 The ETA projection is still based on the overall average.
83 ** It is now possible to connect to FTP servers through FWTK
84 firewalls. Set ftp_proxy to an FTP URL, and Wget will automatically
85 log on to the proxy as "username@host".
87 ** The new option `--retry-connrefused' makes Wget retry downloads
88 even in the face of refused connections, which are otherwise
89 considered a fatal error.
91 ** The new option `--dns-cache=off' may be used to prevent Wget from
94 ** Wget no longer escapes characters in local file names based on
95 whether they're appropriate in URLs. Escaping can still occur for
96 nonprintable characters or for '/', but no longer for frequent
97 characters such as space. You can use the new option
98 --restrict-file-names to relax or strengthen these rules, which can be
99 useful if you dislike the default or if you're downloading to
100 non-native partitions.
102 ** Handling of HTML comments has been dumbed down to conform to what
103 users expect and other browsers do: instead of being treated as SGML
104 declaration, a comment is terminated at the first occurrence of "-->".
105 Use `--strict-comments' to revert to the old behavior.
107 ** Wget now correctly handles relative URIs that begin with "//", such
108 as "//img.foo.com/foo.jpg".
110 ** Boolean options in `.wgetrc' and on the command line now accept
111 values "yes" and "no" along with the traditional "on" and "off".
113 ** It is now possible to specify decimal values for timeouts, waiting
114 periods, and download rate. For instance, `--wait=0.5' now works as
115 expected, as does `--dns-timeout=0.5' and even `--limit-rate=2.5k'.
117 * Wget 1.8.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
119 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
121 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
123 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
124 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
125 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
126 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
127 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
129 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
130 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
131 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
134 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
136 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
137 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
138 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
141 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
142 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
143 have been downloaded.
145 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
146 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
147 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
149 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
150 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
151 are now converted correctly.
153 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
154 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
157 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
158 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
159 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
161 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
162 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
165 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
166 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
168 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
171 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
172 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
174 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
175 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
176 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
177 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
179 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
181 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
183 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
185 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
186 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
189 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
190 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
191 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
193 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
194 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
195 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
196 stressing for the server and the network.
198 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
201 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
202 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
204 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
205 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
208 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
209 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
210 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
211 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
214 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
216 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
217 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
218 large sites (thousands of documents).
220 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
221 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
222 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
223 distribution installed on your system.
225 * Changes in Wget 1.6
227 ** Administrative changes.
229 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
230 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
231 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
232 are being helped by many other people.
234 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
237 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
239 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
240 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
241 the web page for downloading instructions.
243 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
244 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
245 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
247 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
248 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
249 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
250 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
252 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
253 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
254 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
255 default in the system wgetrc.
257 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
258 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
259 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
261 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
262 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
263 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
265 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
266 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
267 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
269 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
271 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
272 bound to multiple IP addresses.
274 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
276 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
278 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
280 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
282 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
284 ** Wget speaks many languages!
286 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
287 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
288 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
290 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
292 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
294 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
296 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
298 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
299 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
301 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
304 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
305 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
307 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
310 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
311 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
314 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
316 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
317 standards set by other GNU utilities.
319 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
320 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
322 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
325 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
326 distributed with Wget.
328 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
330 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
332 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
334 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
336 ** Can do passive FTP.
340 ** Info documentation expanded.
342 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
344 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
348 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
350 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
351 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
353 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
355 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
357 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
360 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
362 ** --convert-links should work now.
366 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
370 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
372 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
374 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
376 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
377 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
378 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
379 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
380 most importantly, use.
382 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
383 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
385 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
386 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
387 wget http://user:password@hostname/
389 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
390 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
391 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
393 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
394 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
396 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
397 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
399 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
401 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
402 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
404 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
407 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
408 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
411 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
412 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
413 sysadmin to like you).
415 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
417 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
420 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
421 through a proxy server.
423 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
424 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
426 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
429 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
430 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
432 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
434 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
436 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
438 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
439 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
441 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
442 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
444 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
446 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
447 turn on mirroring options).
449 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
451 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
453 ** A host of bugfixes.
455 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
457 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
459 ** Added support for no_proxy
461 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
463 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
465 ** More natural command-line options
467 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
469 ** Added support for robots.txt
471 ** Fixed some minor bugs
473 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
475 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
477 ** REST supported in FTP
479 ** Proxy servers supported
481 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
482 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
483 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
485 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
487 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
489 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
491 ** autoconf supported
493 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
494 Copyright information:
496 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
498 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
499 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
500 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
501 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
503 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
504 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
505 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last