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