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>.
8 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
10 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
12 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
13 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
16 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
17 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
18 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
20 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
21 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
22 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
23 stressing for the server and the network.
25 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
28 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
29 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
31 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
32 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
35 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
36 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
37 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
38 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
41 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
43 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
44 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
45 large sites (thousands of documents).
47 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
48 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
49 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
50 distribution installed on your system.
54 ** Administrative changes.
56 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
57 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
58 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
59 are being helped by many other people.
61 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
64 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
66 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
67 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
68 the web page for downloading instructions.
70 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
71 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
72 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
74 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
75 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
76 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
77 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
79 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
80 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
81 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
82 default in the system wgetrc.
84 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
85 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
86 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
88 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
89 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
90 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
92 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
93 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
94 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
96 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
98 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
99 bound to multiple IP addresses.
101 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
103 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
105 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
107 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
109 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
111 ** Wget speaks many languages!
113 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
114 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
115 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
117 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
119 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
121 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
123 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
125 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
126 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
128 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
131 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
132 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
134 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
137 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
138 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
141 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
143 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
144 standards set by other GNU utilities.
146 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
147 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
149 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
152 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
153 distributed with Wget.
155 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
157 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
159 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
161 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
163 ** Can do passive FTP.
167 ** Info documentation expanded.
169 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
171 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
175 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
177 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
178 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
180 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
182 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
184 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
187 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
189 ** --convert-links should work now.
193 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
197 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
199 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
201 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
203 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
204 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
205 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
206 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
207 most importantly, use.
209 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
210 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
212 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
213 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
214 wget http://user:password@hostname/
216 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
217 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
218 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
220 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
221 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
223 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
224 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
226 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
228 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
229 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
231 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
234 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
235 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
238 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
239 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
240 sysadmin to like you).
242 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
244 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
247 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
248 through a proxy server.
250 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
251 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
253 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
256 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
257 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
259 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
261 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
263 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
265 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
266 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
268 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
269 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
271 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
273 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
274 turn on mirroring options).
276 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
278 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
280 ** A host of bugfixes.
282 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
284 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
286 ** Added support for no_proxy
288 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
290 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
292 ** More natural command-line options
294 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
296 ** Added support for robots.txt
298 ** Fixed some minor bugs
300 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
302 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
304 ** REST supported in FTP
306 ** Proxy servers supported
308 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
309 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
310 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
312 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
314 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
316 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
318 ** autoconf supported
320 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
321 Copyright information:
323 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
325 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
326 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
327 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
328 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
330 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
331 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
332 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last