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 ** "Recursive retrieval" has been revamped:
15 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
16 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
17 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
20 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
21 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
24 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
25 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
26 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
28 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
31 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
32 <http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/norobots-rfc.html>.
34 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
35 quoting bug. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F'
36 is no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
37 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
39 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
41 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
43 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
44 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
47 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
48 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
49 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
51 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
52 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
53 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
54 stressing for the server and the network.
56 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
59 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
60 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
62 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
63 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
66 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
67 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
68 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
69 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
72 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
74 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
75 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
76 large sites (thousands of documents).
78 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
79 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
80 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
81 distribution installed on your system.
85 ** Administrative changes.
87 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
88 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
89 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
90 are being helped by many other people.
92 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
95 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
97 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
98 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
99 the web page for downloading instructions.
101 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
102 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
103 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
105 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
106 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
107 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
108 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
110 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
111 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
112 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
113 default in the system wgetrc.
115 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
116 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
117 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
119 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
120 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
121 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
123 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
124 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
125 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
127 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
129 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
130 bound to multiple IP addresses.
132 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
134 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
136 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
138 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
140 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
142 ** Wget speaks many languages!
144 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
145 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
146 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
148 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
150 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
152 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
154 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
156 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
157 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
159 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
162 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
163 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
165 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
168 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
169 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
172 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
174 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
175 standards set by other GNU utilities.
177 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
178 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
180 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
183 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
184 distributed with Wget.
186 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
188 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
190 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
192 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
194 ** Can do passive FTP.
198 ** Info documentation expanded.
200 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
202 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
206 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
208 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
209 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
211 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
213 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
215 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
218 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
220 ** --convert-links should work now.
224 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
228 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
230 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
232 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
234 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
235 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
236 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
237 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
238 most importantly, use.
240 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
241 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
243 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
244 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
245 wget http://user:password@hostname/
247 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
248 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
249 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
251 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
252 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
254 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
255 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
257 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
259 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
260 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
262 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
265 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
266 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
269 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
270 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
271 sysadmin to like you).
273 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
275 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
278 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
279 through a proxy server.
281 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
282 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
284 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
287 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
288 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
290 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
292 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
294 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
296 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
297 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
299 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
300 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
302 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
304 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
305 turn on mirroring options).
307 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
309 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
311 ** A host of bugfixes.
313 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
315 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
317 ** Added support for no_proxy
319 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
321 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
323 ** More natural command-line options
325 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
327 ** Added support for robots.txt
329 ** Fixed some minor bugs
331 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
333 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
335 ** REST supported in FTP
337 ** Proxy servers supported
339 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
340 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
341 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
343 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
345 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
347 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
349 ** autoconf supported
351 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
352 Copyright information:
354 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
356 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
357 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
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359 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
361 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
362 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
363 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last