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