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 ** The build process now requires Autoconf 2.5x.
12 ** It is now possible to specify that POST method be used for HTTP
13 requests. For example, `wget --post-data="id=foo&data=bar" URL' will
14 send a POST request with the specified contents.
16 ** IPv6 is experimentally supported.
18 ** The `--timeout' option now affects the connect timeout as well.
19 Previously it only affected reading and writing data.
21 ** Download speed shown by the progress bar is based on the data
22 recently read, rather than the average speed of the entire download.
23 The ETA is still based on the average speed, though.
25 ** It is now possible to connect to FTP servers through FWTK
26 firewalls. Set ftp_proxy to an FTP URL, and Wget will automatically
27 log on to the proxy as "username@host".
29 ** The new option `--retry-connrefused' makes Wget retry downloads
30 even in the face of refused connections, which are otherwise
31 considered a fatal error.
33 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
35 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
37 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
38 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
39 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
40 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
41 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
43 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
44 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
45 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
48 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
50 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
51 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
52 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
55 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
56 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
59 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
60 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
61 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
63 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
64 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
65 are now converted correctly.
67 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
68 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
71 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
72 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
73 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
75 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
76 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
79 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
80 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
82 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
85 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
86 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
88 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
89 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
90 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
91 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
93 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
95 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
97 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
99 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
100 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
103 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
104 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
105 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
107 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
108 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
109 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
110 stressing for the server and the network.
112 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
115 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
116 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
118 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
119 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
122 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
123 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
124 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
125 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
128 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
130 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
131 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
132 large sites (thousands of documents).
134 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
135 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
136 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
137 distribution installed on your system.
139 * Changes in Wget 1.6
141 ** Administrative changes.
143 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
144 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
145 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
146 are being helped by many other people.
148 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
151 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
153 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
154 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
155 the web page for downloading instructions.
157 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
158 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
159 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
161 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
162 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
163 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
164 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
166 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
167 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
168 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
169 default in the system wgetrc.
171 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
172 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
173 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
175 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
176 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
177 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
179 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
180 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
181 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
183 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
185 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
186 bound to multiple IP addresses.
188 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
190 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
192 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
194 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
196 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
198 ** Wget speaks many languages!
200 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
201 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
202 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
204 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
206 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
208 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
210 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
212 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
213 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
215 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
218 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
219 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
221 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
224 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
225 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
228 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
230 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
231 standards set by other GNU utilities.
233 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
234 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
236 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
239 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
240 distributed with Wget.
242 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
244 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
246 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
248 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
250 ** Can do passive FTP.
254 ** Info documentation expanded.
256 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
258 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
262 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
264 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
265 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
267 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
269 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
271 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
274 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
276 ** --convert-links should work now.
280 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
284 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
286 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
288 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
290 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
291 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
292 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
293 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
294 most importantly, use.
296 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
297 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
299 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
300 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
301 wget http://user:password@hostname/
303 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
304 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
305 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
307 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
308 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
310 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
311 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
313 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
315 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
316 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
318 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
321 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
322 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
325 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
326 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
327 sysadmin to like you).
329 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
331 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
334 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
335 through a proxy server.
337 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
338 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
340 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
343 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
344 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
346 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
348 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
350 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
352 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
353 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
355 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
356 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
358 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
360 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
361 turn on mirroring options).
363 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
365 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
367 ** A host of bugfixes.
369 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
371 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
373 ** Added support for no_proxy
375 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
377 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
379 ** More natural command-line options
381 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
383 ** Added support for robots.txt
385 ** Fixed some minor bugs
387 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
389 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
391 ** REST supported in FTP
393 ** Proxy servers supported
395 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
396 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
397 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
399 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
401 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
403 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
405 ** autoconf supported
407 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
408 Copyright information:
410 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
412 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
413 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
414 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
415 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
417 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
418 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
419 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last