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 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
11 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
12 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
13 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
14 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
16 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
17 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
18 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
21 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
23 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
24 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
25 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
28 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
29 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
32 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
33 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
34 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
36 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
37 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
38 are now converted correctly.
40 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
41 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
44 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
45 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
46 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
48 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
49 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
52 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
53 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
55 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
58 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
59 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
61 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
62 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
63 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
64 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
66 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
68 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
70 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
72 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
73 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
76 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
77 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
78 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
80 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
81 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
82 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
83 stressing for the server and the network.
85 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
88 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
89 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
91 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
92 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
95 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
96 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
97 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
98 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
101 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
103 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
104 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
105 large sites (thousands of documents).
107 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
108 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
109 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
110 distribution installed on your system.
112 * Changes in Wget 1.6
114 ** Administrative changes.
116 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
117 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
118 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
119 are being helped by many other people.
121 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
124 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
126 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
127 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
128 the web page for downloading instructions.
130 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
131 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
132 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
134 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
135 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
136 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
137 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
139 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
140 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
141 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
142 default in the system wgetrc.
144 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
145 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
146 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
148 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
149 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
150 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
152 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
153 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
154 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
156 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
158 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
159 bound to multiple IP addresses.
161 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
163 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
165 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
167 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
169 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
171 ** Wget speaks many languages!
173 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
174 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
175 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
177 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
179 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
181 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
183 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
185 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
186 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
188 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
191 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
192 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
194 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
197 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
198 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
201 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
203 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
204 standards set by other GNU utilities.
206 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
207 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
209 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
212 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
213 distributed with Wget.
215 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
217 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
219 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
221 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
223 ** Can do passive FTP.
227 ** Info documentation expanded.
229 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
231 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
235 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
237 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
238 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
240 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
242 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
244 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
247 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
249 ** --convert-links should work now.
253 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
257 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
259 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
261 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
263 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
264 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
265 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
266 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
267 most importantly, use.
269 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
270 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
272 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
273 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
274 wget http://user:password@hostname/
276 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
277 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
278 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
280 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
281 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
283 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
284 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
286 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
288 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
289 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
291 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
294 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
295 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
298 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
299 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
300 sysadmin to like you).
302 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
304 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
307 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
308 through a proxy server.
310 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
311 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
313 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
316 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
317 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
319 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
321 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
323 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
325 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
326 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
328 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
329 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
331 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
333 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
334 turn on mirroring options).
336 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
338 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
340 ** A host of bugfixes.
342 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
344 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
346 ** Added support for no_proxy
348 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
350 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
352 ** More natural command-line options
354 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
356 ** Added support for robots.txt
358 ** Fixed some minor bugs
360 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
362 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
364 ** REST supported in FTP
366 ** Proxy servers supported
368 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
369 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
370 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
372 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
374 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
376 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
378 ** autoconf supported
380 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
381 Copyright information:
383 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
385 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
386 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
387 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
388 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
390 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
391 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
392 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last