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>.
10 ** "Recursive retrieval" now uses a breadth-first algorithm.
11 Recursive downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory
14 ** A new progress indicator is now available. Try it with
15 --progress=bar or using `progress = bar' in `.wgetrc'.
17 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
20 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
21 <http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/norobots-rfc.html>.
23 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
24 quoting bug. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F'
25 is no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
26 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
28 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
30 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
32 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
33 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
36 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
37 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
38 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
40 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
41 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
42 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
43 stressing for the server and the network.
45 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
48 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
49 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
51 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
52 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
55 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
56 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
57 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
58 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
61 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
63 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
64 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
65 large sites (thousands of documents).
67 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
68 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
69 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
70 distribution installed on your system.
74 ** Administrative changes.
76 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
77 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
78 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
79 are being helped by many other people.
81 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
84 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
86 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
87 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
88 the web page for downloading instructions.
90 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
91 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
92 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
94 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
95 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
96 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
97 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
99 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
100 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
101 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
102 default in the system wgetrc.
104 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
105 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
106 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
108 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
109 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
110 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
112 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
113 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
114 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
116 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
118 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
119 bound to multiple IP addresses.
121 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
123 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
125 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
127 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
129 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
131 ** Wget speaks many languages!
133 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
134 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
135 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
137 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
139 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
141 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
143 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
145 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
146 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
148 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
151 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
152 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
154 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
157 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
158 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
161 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
163 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
164 standards set by other GNU utilities.
166 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
167 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
169 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
172 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
173 distributed with Wget.
175 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
177 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
179 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
181 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
183 ** Can do passive FTP.
187 ** Info documentation expanded.
189 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
191 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
195 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
197 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
198 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
200 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
202 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
204 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
207 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
209 ** --convert-links should work now.
213 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
217 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
219 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
221 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
223 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
224 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
225 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
226 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
227 most importantly, use.
229 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
230 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
232 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
233 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
234 wget http://user:password@hostname/
236 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
237 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
238 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
240 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
241 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
243 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
244 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
246 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
248 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
249 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
251 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
254 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
255 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
258 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
259 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
260 sysadmin to like you).
262 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
264 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
267 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
268 through a proxy server.
270 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
271 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
273 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
276 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
277 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
279 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
281 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
283 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
285 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
286 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
288 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
289 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
291 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
293 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
294 turn on mirroring options).
296 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
298 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
300 ** A host of bugfixes.
302 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
304 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
306 ** Added support for no_proxy
308 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
310 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
312 ** More natural command-line options
314 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
316 ** Added support for robots.txt
318 ** Fixed some minor bugs
320 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
322 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
324 ** REST supported in FTP
326 ** Proxy servers supported
328 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
329 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
330 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
332 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
334 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
336 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
338 ** autoconf supported
340 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
341 Copyright information:
343 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
345 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
346 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
347 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
348 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
350 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
351 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
352 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last