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 `--header' option can now be used to override generated
18 headers. For example, `wget --header="Host: foo.bar"
19 http://127.0.0.1' tells Wget to connect to localhost, but to specify
20 "foo.bar" in the `Host' header. In previous versions such use of
21 `--header' lead to duplicate headers in HTTP requests.
23 ** The responses without headers, aka "HTTP 0.9" responses, are
24 detected and handled. Although HTTP 0.9 has long been obsolete, it is
25 still occasionally encountered. (Popular browsers still support it,
26 so clueless authors of dynamic pages who forget to emit headers don't
27 notice anything wrong.)
29 ** The progress bar is now updated regularly even when the data does
32 ** Wget no longer preserves permissions of files retrieved by FTP by
33 default. Anonymous FTP servers frequently use permissions like "664",
34 which might not be what the user wants. The new option
35 `--preserve-permissions' and the corresponding `.wgetrc' variable can
36 be used to revert to the old behavior.
38 ** Many options that previously unconditionally set or unset various
39 flags are now boolean options that can be invoked as either `--OPTION'
40 or `--no-OPTION'. Options that required an argument "on" or "off"
41 have also been changed this way, but they still accept the old syntax
42 for backward compatibility. For example, instead of `--glob=off' you
43 can write `--no-glob'.
45 Allowing `--no-OPTION' for every `--OPTION' is useful because it
46 allows the user to override non-default behavior specified via
49 ** The new option `--keep-session-cookies' causes `--save-cookies' to
50 save session cookies along with the permanent ones. This is useful on
51 sites that require you to log in before you can access some pages.
52 With this option, multiple Wget runs will be treated as a single
55 * Wget 1.9.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
57 * Changes in Wget 1.9.
59 ** It is now possible to specify that POST method be used for HTTP
60 requests. For example, `wget --post-data="id=foo&data=bar" URL' will
61 send a POST request with the specified contents.
63 ** IPv6 support is available, although it's still experimental.
65 ** The `--timeout' option now also affects DNS lookup and establishing
66 the TCP connection. Previously it only affected reading and writing
67 data. Those three timeouts can be set separately using
68 `--dns-timeout', `--connection-timeout', and `--read-timeout',
71 ** Download speed shown by the progress bar is based on the data
72 recently read, rather than the average speed of the entire download.
73 The ETA projection is still based on the overall average.
75 ** It is now possible to connect to FTP servers through FWTK
76 firewalls. Set ftp_proxy to an FTP URL, and Wget will automatically
77 log on to the proxy as "username@host".
79 ** The new option `--retry-connrefused' makes Wget retry downloads
80 even in the face of refused connections, which are otherwise
81 considered a fatal error.
83 ** The new option `--dns-cache=off' may be used to prevent Wget from
86 ** Wget no longer escapes characters in local file names based on
87 whether they're appropriate in URLs. Escaping can still occur for
88 nonprintable characters or for '/', but no longer for frequent
89 characters such as space. You can use the new option
90 --restrict-file-names to relax or strengthen these rules, which can be
91 useful if you dislike the default or if you're downloading to
92 non-native partitions.
94 ** Handling of HTML comments has been dumbed down to conform to what
95 users expect and other browsers do: instead of being treated as SGML
96 declaration, a comment is terminated at the first occurrence of "-->".
97 Use `--strict-comments' to revert to the old behavior.
99 ** Wget now correctly handles relative URIs that begin with "//", such
100 as "//img.foo.com/foo.jpg".
102 ** Boolean options in `.wgetrc' and on the command line now accept
103 values "yes" and "no" along with the traditional "on" and "off".
105 ** It is now possible to specify decimal values for timeouts, waiting
106 periods, and download rate. For instance, `--wait=0.5' now works as
107 expected, as does `--dns-timeout=0.5' and even `--limit-rate=2.5k'.
109 * Wget 1.8.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
111 * Wget 1.8.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
113 * Changes in Wget 1.8.
115 ** A new progress indicator is now available and used by default.
116 You can choose the progress bar type with `--progress=TYPE'. Two
117 types are available, "bar" (the new default), and "dot" (the old
118 dotted indicator). You can permanently revert to the old progress
119 indicator by putting `progress = dot' in your `.wgetrc'.
121 ** You can limit the download rate of the retrieval using the
122 `--limit-rate' option. For example, `wget --limit-rate=15k URL' will
123 tell Wget not to download the body of the URL faster than 15 kilobytes
126 ** Recursive retrieval and link conversion have been revamped:
128 *** Wget now traverses links breadth-first. This makes the
129 calculation of depth much more reliable than before. Also, recursive
130 downloads are faster and consume *significantly* less memory than
133 *** Links are converted only when the entire retrieval is complete.
134 This is the only safe thing to do, as only then is it known what URLs
135 have been downloaded.
137 *** BASE tags are handled correctly when converting links. Since Wget
138 already resolves <base href="..."> when resolving handling URLs, link
139 conversion now makes the BASE tags point to an empty string.
141 *** HTML anchors are now handled correctly. Links to an anchor in the
142 same document (<a href="#anchorname">), which used to confuse Wget,
143 are now converted correctly.
145 *** When in page-requisites (-p) mode, no-parent (-np) is ignored when
146 retrieving for inline images, stylesheets, and other documents needed
149 *** Page-requisites (-p) mode now works with frames. In other words,
150 `wget -p URL-THAT-USES-FRAMES' will now download the frame HTML files,
151 and all the files that they need to be displayed properly.
153 ** `--base' now works conjunction with `--input-file', providing a
154 base for each URL and thereby allowing the URLs in the file to be
157 ** If a host has more than one IP address, Wget uses the other
158 addresses when accessing the first one fails.
160 ** Host directories now contain port information if the URL is at a
163 ** Wget now supports the robots.txt directives specified in
164 <http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots-rfc.txt>.
166 ** URL parser has been fixed, especially the infamous overzealous
167 quoting. Wget no longer dequotes reserved characters, e.g. `%3F' is
168 no longer translated to `?', nor `%2B' to `+'. Unsafe characters
169 which are not reserved are still escaped, of course.
171 ** No more than 20 successive redirections are allowed.
173 * Wget 1.7.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
175 * Changes in Wget 1.7.
177 ** SSL (`https') pages now work if you compile Wget with SSL support;
178 use the `--with-ssl' configure flag. You need to have OpenSSL
181 ** Cookies are now supported. Wget will accept cookies sent by the
182 server and return them in later requests. Additionally, it can load
183 and save cookies to disk, in the same format that Netscape uses.
185 ** "Keep-alive" (persistent) HTTP connections are now supported.
186 Using keep-alive allows Wget to share one TCP/IP connection for
187 many retrievals, making multiple-file downloads faster and less
188 stressing for the server and the network.
190 ** Wget now recognizes FTP directory listings generated by NT and VMS
193 ** It is now possible to recurse through FTP sites where logging in
194 puts you in some directory other than '/'.
196 ** You may now use `~' to mean home directory in `.wgetrc'. For
197 example, `load_cookies = ~/.netscape/cookies.txt' works as you would
200 ** The HTML parser has been rewritten. The new one works more
201 reliably, allows finer-grained control over which tags and attributes
202 are detected, and has better support for some features like correctly
203 skipping comments and declarations, decoding entities, etc. It is
206 ** <meta name="robots"> tags are now respected.
208 ** Wget's internal tables now use hash tables instead of linked lists
209 where appropriate. This results in huge speedups when retrieving
210 large sites (thousands of documents).
212 ** Wget now has a man page, automatically generated from the Texinfo
213 documentation. (The last version that shipped with a man page was
214 1.4.5). To get this, you need to have pod2man from the Perl
215 distribution installed on your system.
217 * Changes in Wget 1.6
219 ** Administrative changes.
221 *** Maintainership. Due to Hrvoje being plagued with a "real job",
222 Dan Harkless is the most active maintainer (not that he doesn't have a
223 real job as well). Hrvoje still participates occasionally, and both
224 are being helped by many other people.
226 *** Web page. Thanks to Jan Prikryl, Wget has an "official" web page.
229 http://sunsite.dk/wget/
231 *** Anonymous CVS. Thanks to ever-helpful Karsten Thygesen, Wget
232 sources are now available at an anonymous CVS server. Take a look at
233 the web page for downloading instructions.
235 ** New -K / --backup-converted / backup_converted = on option causes files
236 modified due to -k to be saved with a .orig prefix before being changed. When
237 using -N as well, it is these .orig files that are compared against the server.
239 ** New --follow-tags / follow_tags = ... option allows you to restrict
240 Wget to following only certain HTML tags when doing a recursive
241 retrieval. -G / --ignore-tags / ignore_tags = ... is just the
242 opposite -- all tags but the ones you specify will be followed.
244 ** New --waitretry / waitretry = SECONDS option allows waiting between retries
245 of failed downloads. Wget will use "linear" backoff, waiting 1 second after the
246 first failure, 2 after the second, up to SECONDS. waitretry is set to 10 by
247 default in the system wgetrc.
249 ** New -p / --page-requisites / page_requisites = on option causes
250 Wget to download all ancillary files necessary to display a given HTML
251 page properly (e.g. inlined images).
253 ** New -E / --html-extension / html_extension = on option causes Wget
254 to append ".html" to text/html filenames not ending in regexp
255 "\.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?".
257 ** New type of .wgetrc command -- "lockable Boolean". Can be set to on, off,
258 always, or never. This allows the .wgetrc to override the commandline. So far,
259 passive_ftp is the only .wgetrc command which takes a lockable Boolean.
261 ** A number of new translation files have been added.
263 ** New --bind-address / bind_address = <address> option for people on hosts
264 bound to multiple IP addresses.
266 ** wget now accepts (illegal per HTTP spec) relative URLs in HTTP redirects.
268 * Wget 1.5.3 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
270 * Wget 1.5.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
272 * Wget 1.5.1 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
274 * Changes in Wget 1.5.0
276 ** Wget speaks many languages!
278 On systems with gettext(), Wget will output messages in the language
279 set by the current locale, if available. At this time we support
280 Czech, German, Croatian, Italian, Norwegian and Portuguese.
282 ** Opie (Skey) is now supported with FTP.
284 ** HTTP Digest Access Authentication (RFC2069) is now supported.
286 ** The new `-b' option makes Wget go to background automatically.
288 ** The `-I' and `-X' options now accept wildcard arguments.
290 ** The `-w' option now accepts suffixes `s' for seconds, `m' for
291 minutes, `h' for hours, `d' for days and `w' for weeks.
293 ** Upon getting SIGHUP, the whole previous log is now copied to
296 ** Wget now understands proxy settings with explicit usernames and
297 passwords, e.g. `http://user:password@proxy.foo.com/'.
299 ** You can use the new `--cut-dirs' option to make Wget create less
302 ** The `;type=a' appendix to FTP URLs is now recognized. For
303 instance, the following command will retrieve the welcoming message in
306 wget "ftp://ftp.somewhere.com/welcome.msg;type=a"
308 ** `--help' and `--version' options have been redone to to conform to
309 standards set by other GNU utilities.
311 ** Wget should now be compilable under MS Windows environment. MS
312 Visual C++ and Watcom C have been used successfully.
314 ** If the file length is known, percentages are displayed during
317 ** The manual page, now hopelessly out of date, is no longer
318 distributed with Wget.
320 * Wget 1.4.5 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
322 * Wget 1.4.4 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
324 * Changes in Wget 1.4.3
326 ** Wget is now a GNU utility.
328 ** Can do passive FTP.
332 ** Info documentation expanded.
334 ** Compiles on pre-ANSI compilers.
336 ** Global wgetrc now goes to /usr/local/etc (i.e. $sysconfdir).
340 * Changes in Wget 1.4.2
342 ** New mirror site at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/infosystems/wget/,
343 thanks to Karsten Thygesen.
345 ** Mailing list! Mail to wget-request@sunsite.auc.dk to subscribe.
347 ** New option --delete-after for proxy prefetching.
349 ** New option --retr-symlinks to retrieve symbolic links like plain
352 ** rmold.pl -- script to remove files deleted on the remote server
354 ** --convert-links should work now.
358 * Changes in Wget 1.4.1
362 ** Added -I (the opposite of -X).
364 ** Dot tracing is now customizable; try wget --dot-style=binary
366 * Changes in Wget 1.4.0
368 ** Wget 1.4.0 [formerly known as Geturl] is an extensive rewrite of
369 Geturl. Although many things look suspiciously similar, most of the
370 stuff was rewritten, like recursive retrieval, HTTP, FTP and mostly
371 everything else. Wget should be now easier to debug, maintain and,
372 most importantly, use.
374 ** Recursive HTTP should now work without glitches, even with Location
375 changes, server-generated directory listings and other naughty stuff.
377 ** HTTP regetting is supported on servers that support Range
378 specification. WWW authorization is supported -- try
379 wget http://user:password@hostname/
381 ** FTP support was rewritten and widely enhanced. Globbing should now
382 work flawlessly. Symbolic links are created locally. All the
383 information the Unix-style ls listing can give is now recognized.
385 ** Recursive FTP is supported, e.g.
386 wget -r ftp://gnjilux.cc.fer.hr/pub/unix/util/
388 ** You can specify "rejected" directories, to which you do not want to
389 enter, e.g. with wget -X /pub
391 ** Time-stamping is supported, with both HTTP and FTP. Try wget -N URL.
393 ** A new texinfo reference manual is provided. It can be read with
394 Emacs, standalone info, or converted to HTML, dvi or postscript.
396 ** Fixed a long-standing bug, so that Wget now works over SLIP
399 ** You can have a system-wide wgetrc (/usr/local/lib/wgetrc by
400 default). Settings in $HOME/.wgetrc override the global ones, of
403 ** You can set up quota in .wgetrc to prevent sucking too much
404 data. Try `quota = 5M' in .wgetrc (or quota = 100K if you want your
405 sysadmin to like you).
407 ** Download rate is printed after retrieval.
409 ** Wget now sends the `Referer' header when retrieving
412 ** With the new --no-parent option Wget can retrieve FTP recursively
413 through a proxy server.
415 ** HTML parser, as well as the whole of Wget was rewritten to be much
416 faster and less memory-consuming (yes, both).
418 ** Absolute links can be converted to relative links locally. Check
421 ** Wget catches hangup, filtering the output to a log file and
422 resuming work. Try kill -HUP %?wget.
424 ** User-defined headers can be sent. Try
426 wget http://fly.cc.her.hr/ --header='Accept-Charset: iso-8859-2'
428 ** Acceptance/Rejection lists may contain wildcards.
430 ** Wget can display HTTP headers and/or FTP server response with the
431 new `-S' option. It can save the original HTTP headers with `-s'.
433 ** socks library is now supported (thanks to Antonio Rosella
434 <Antonio.Rosella@agip.it>). Configure with --with-socks.
436 ** There is a nicer display of REST-ed output.
438 ** Many new options (like -x to force directory hierarchy, or -m to
439 turn on mirroring options).
441 ** Wget is now distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL).
443 ** Lots of small features I can't remember. :-)
445 ** A host of bugfixes.
447 * Changes in Geturl 1.3
449 ** Added FTP globbing support (ftp://fly.cc.fer.hr/*)
451 ** Added support for no_proxy
453 ** Added support for ftp://user:password@host/
455 ** Added support for %xx in URL syntax
457 ** More natural command-line options
459 ** Added -e switch to execute .geturlrc commands from the command-line
461 ** Added support for robots.txt
463 ** Fixed some minor bugs
465 * Geturl 1.2 is a bugfix release with no user-visible changes.
467 * Changes in Geturl 1.1
469 ** REST supported in FTP
471 ** Proxy servers supported
473 ** GNU getopt used, which enables command-line arguments to be ordered
474 as you wish, e.g. geturl http://fly.cc.fer.hr/ -vo log is the same as
475 geturl -vo log http://fly.cc.fer.hr/
477 ** Netscape-compatible URL syntax for HTTP supported: host[:port]/dir/file
479 ** NcFTP-compatible colon URL syntax for FTP supported: host:/dir/file
481 ** <base href="xxx"> supported
483 ** autoconf supported
485 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
486 Copyright information:
488 Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
490 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
491 copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided that
492 the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved, thus
493 giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
495 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions of this
496 document, or of portions of it, under the above conditions,
497 provided also that they carry prominent notices stating who last