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. Try it with
11 --progress=bar or using `progress = bar' in `.wgetrc'.
13 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
14 quoting bug. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F'
15 is no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
16 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
18 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
20 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
22 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
23 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
26 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
27 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
28 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
30 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
31 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
32 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
33 stressing for the server and the network.
35 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
38 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
39 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
41 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
42 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
45 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
46 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
47 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
48 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
51 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
53 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
54 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
55 large sites (thousands of documents).
57 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
58 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
59 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
60 distribution installed on your system.
64 ** Administrative changes.
66 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
67 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
68 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
69 are being helped by many other people.
71 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
74 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
76 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
77 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
78 the web page for downloading instructions.
80 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
81 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
82 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
84 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
85 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
86 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
87 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
89 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
90 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
91 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
92 default in the system wgetrc.
94 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
95 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
96 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
98 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
99 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
100 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
102 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
103 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
104 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
106 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
108 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
109 bound to multiple IP addresses.
111 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
113 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
115 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
117 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
119 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
121 ** Wget speaks many languages!
123 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
124 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
125 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
127 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
129 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
131 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
133 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
135 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
136 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
138 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
141 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
142 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
144 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
147 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
148 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
151 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
153 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
154 standards set by other GNU utilities.
156 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
157 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
159 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
162 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
163 distributed with Wget.
165 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
167 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
169 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
171 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
173 ** Can do passive FTP.
177 ** Info documentation expanded.
179 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
181 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
185 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
187 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
188 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
190 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
192 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
194 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
197 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
199 ** --convert-links should work now.
203 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
207 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
209 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
211 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
213 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
214 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
215 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
216 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
217 most importantly, use.
219 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
220 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
222 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
223 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
224 wget http://user:password@hostname/
226 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
227 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
228 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
230 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
231 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
233 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
234 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
236 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
238 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
239 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
241 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
244 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
245 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
248 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
249 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
250 sysadmin to like you).
252 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
254 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
257 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
258 through a proxy server.
260 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
261 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
263 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
266 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
267 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
269 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
271 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
273 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
275 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
276 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
278 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
279 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
281 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
283 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
284 turn on mirroring options).
286 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
288 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
290 ** A host of bugfixes.
292 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
294 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
296 ** Added support for no_proxy
298 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
300 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
302 ** More natural command-line options
304 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
306 ** Added support for robots.txt
308 ** Fixed some minor bugs
310 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
312 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
314 ** REST supported in FTP
316 ** Proxy servers supported
318 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
319 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
320 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
322 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
324 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
326 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
328 ** autoconf supported
330 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
331 Copyright information:
333 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
335 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
336 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
337 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
338 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
340 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
341 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
342 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last