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 ** The new option `--keep-session-cookies' causes `--save-cookies' to
11 save session cookies along with the permanent ones. This is useful on
12 sites that require you to log in before you can access some pages.
13 With this option, multiple Wget runs will be treated as a single
16 * Changes in Wget 1.9.
18 ** It is now possible to specify that POST method be used for HTTP
19 requests. For example, `wget --post-data="id=foo&data=bar" URL' will
20 send a POST request with the specified contents.
22 ** IPv6 support is available, although it's still experimental.
24 ** The `--timeout' option now also affects DNS lookup and establishing
25 the TCP connection. Previously it only affected reading and writing
26 data. Those three timeouts can be set separately using
27 `--dns-timeout', `--connection-timeout', and `--read-timeout',
30 ** Download speed shown by the progress bar is based on the data
31 recently read, rather than the average speed of the entire download.
32 The ETA projection is still based on the overall average.
34 ** It is now possible to connect to FTP servers through FWTK
35 firewalls. Set ftp_proxy to an FTP URL, and Wget will automatically
36 log on to the proxy as "username@host".
38 ** The new option `--retry-connrefused' makes Wget retry downloads
39 even in the face of refused connections, which are otherwise
40 considered a fatal error.
42 ** The new option `--dns-cache=off' may be used to prevent Wget from
45 ** Wget no longer escapes characters in local file names based on
46 whether they're appropriate in URLs. Escaping can still occur for
47 nonprintable characters or for '/', but no longer for frequent
48 characters such as space. You can use the new option
49 --restrict-file-names to relax or strengthen these rules, which can be
50 useful if you dislike the default or if you're downloading to
51 non-native partitions.
53 ** Handling of HTML comments has been dumbed down to conform to what
54 users expect and other browsers do: instead of being treated as SGML
55 declaration, a comment is terminated at the first occurrence of "-->".
56 Use `--strict-comments' to revert to the old behavior.
58 ** Wget now correctly handles relative URIs that begin with "//", such
59 as "//img.foo.com/foo.jpg".
61 ** Boolean options in `.wgetrc' and on the command line now accept
62 values "yes" and "no" along with the traditional "on" and "off".
64 ** It is now possible to specify decimal values for timeouts, waiting
65 periods, and download rate. For instance, `--wait=0.5' now works as
66 expected, as does `--dns-timeout=0.5' and even `--limit-rate=2.5k'.
68 * Wget 1.8.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
70 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
72 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
74 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
75 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
76 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
77 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
78 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
80 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
81 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
82 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
85 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
87 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
88 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
89 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
92 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
93 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
96 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
97 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
98 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
100 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
101 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
102 are now converted correctly.
104 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
105 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
108 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
109 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
110 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
112 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
113 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
116 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
117 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
119 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
122 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
123 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
125 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
126 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
127 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
128 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
130 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
132 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
134 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
136 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
137 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
140 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
141 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
142 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
144 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
145 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
146 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
147 stressing for the server and the network.
149 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
152 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
153 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
155 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
156 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
159 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
160 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
161 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
162 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
165 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
167 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
168 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
169 large sites (thousands of documents).
171 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
172 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
173 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
174 distribution installed on your system.
176 * Changes in Wget 1.6
178 ** Administrative changes.
180 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
181 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
182 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
183 are being helped by many other people.
185 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
188 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
190 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
191 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
192 the web page for downloading instructions.
194 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
195 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
196 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
198 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
199 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
200 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
201 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
203 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
204 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
205 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
206 default in the system wgetrc.
208 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
209 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
210 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
212 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
213 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
214 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
216 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
217 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
218 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
220 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
222 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
223 bound to multiple IP addresses.
225 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
227 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
229 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
231 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
233 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
235 ** Wget speaks many languages!
237 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
238 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
239 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
241 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
243 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
245 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
247 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
249 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
250 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
252 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
255 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
256 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
258 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
261 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
262 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
265 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
267 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
268 standards set by other GNU utilities.
270 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
271 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
273 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
276 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
277 distributed with Wget.
279 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
281 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
283 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
285 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
287 ** Can do passive FTP.
291 ** Info documentation expanded.
293 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
295 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
299 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
301 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
302 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
304 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
306 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
308 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
311 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
313 ** --convert-links should work now.
317 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
321 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
323 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
325 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
327 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
328 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
329 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
330 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
331 most importantly, use.
333 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
334 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
336 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
337 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
338 wget http://user:password@hostname/
340 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
341 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
342 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
344 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
345 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
347 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
348 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
350 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
352 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
353 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
355 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
358 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
359 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
362 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
363 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
364 sysadmin to like you).
366 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
368 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
371 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
372 through a proxy server.
374 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
375 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
377 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
380 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
381 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
383 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
385 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
387 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
389 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
390 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
392 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
393 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
395 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
397 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
398 turn on mirroring options).
400 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
402 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
404 ** A host of bugfixes.
406 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
408 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
410 ** Added support for no_proxy
412 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
414 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
416 ** More natural command-line options
418 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
420 ** Added support for robots.txt
422 ** Fixed some minor bugs
424 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
426 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
428 ** REST supported in FTP
430 ** Proxy servers supported
432 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
433 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
434 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
436 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
438 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
440 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
442 ** autoconf supported
444 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
445 Copyright information:
447 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
449 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
450 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
451 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
452 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
454 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
455 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
456 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last