GNU wget

Table of Contents

• Introduction to GNU wget
• News
• Downloading GNU wget
• Documentation
• Mailing lists
• Add-ons
• Development of GNU wget

Introduction to GNU wget

GNU Wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols. It is a non-interactive commandline tool, so it may easily be called from scripts, cron jobs, terminals without Xsupport, etc.

Wget has many features to make retrieving large files or mirroring entire web or FTP sites easy, including:

• Can resume aborted downloads, using REST and RANGE
• Can use filename wild cards and recursively mirror directories
• NLS-based message files for many different languages
• Optionally converts absolute links in downloaded documents to relative, so that downloaded documents may link to each other locally
• Runs on most Unix-like operating systems as well as Microsoft Windows
• Supports HTTP and SOCKS proxies
• Supports HTTP cookies
• Supports persistent HTTP connections
• Unattended / background operation
• Uses local file timestamps to determine whether documents need to be re-downloaded when mirroring
• GNU wget is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

News

The latest stable version of Wget is 1.8. This release introduces several important new features since 1.7.1; see NEWS for details.

Downloading GNU wget

The main distribution point for Wget is the GNU software archive. Please choose a mirror site close to you. The master directory is http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/.

Microsoft Windows binaries are available from SunSITE FTP server at ftp://sunsite.dk/projects/wget/windows/ or http://space.tin.it/computer/hherold/ and have been kindly provided by Heiko Herold. An MS-DOS binary designed to be used under plain DOS with a packet driver has been made available by Doug Kaufman. It is available from http://www.rahul.net/dkaufman/. Antinode.org offers a VMS port of Wget.

The latest development source for Wget is always available via anonymous CVS. The source and binary versions of the current development sources patched for compilation in the MS Windows environment are made available by Heiko Herold as well and are available from the URLs mentioned above.

Documentation

The documentation for Wget 1.9 is now available in all common formats. For other manuals, please see http://www.gnu.org/manual.

Documentation for Wget 1.5.2 in Windows help format is available from SunSITE Denmark's FTP server along with a copy of makeinfo for Win32, which is used to build the Windows help file.

Mailing lists

[email protected]

To post to a list, send your email to list_name@sunsite.dk. The lists are open for posting by non-subscribers. If you send a post to the list and you're not subscribed, please include a note that you'd like to be cc'd in replies to your post. Otherwise people will assume you are subscribed and will delete your address when replying so as not to send you two copies of their posts.

For back posts, send an email to list_name-get.first_last@sunsite.dk. The mail server limits the number of returned back posts to 100, so requesting more will actually return you only posts in range first - first+99. For instance, sending an email to the following address will retrieve posts 3500 to 3517:

[email protected]

To unsubscribe to a list, send an email to list_name[email protected]. For more information on list commands, send an email to list_name[email protected].

Following mailing lists that deal with Wget are run at SunSITE:

wget

This is the main Wget discussion list. Currently the Wget bug reporting address, [email protected], simply forwards to this list.

There are archives of the main Wget list at:

• http://fly.cc.fer.hr/archive/wget
• http://www.mail-archive.com/wget%40sunsite.dk/
• http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/409/

The wget list is bidirectionally gatewayed to sunsite.wget, a local newsgroup on sunsite.dk.

wget-patches

If you're submitting a patch to Wget to fix a bug or add a feature, please send it to this list. For more information, please read the Wget Development section.

wget-cvs

Posts to this list are automatically generated. Each time a developer commits CVS sources, an email is sent to this list with the files, versions, and the comment used when committing. People very interested in the development of Wget can get a detailed play-by-play by subscribing to this list.

wget-website-cvs

This is just like the wget-cvs list, but for the wget-website CVS project rather than the wget project.

Add-ons

Several people have contributed to Wget and maintain their own web pages:

• Antonio Rosella has written a Wget Gateway, to allow usage of a socksified Wget behind a firewall.
• Lachlan Cranswick has a very nice page with a lot of Wget tips and goodies, especially shell scripts available for setting up Wget and auto mirroring.
• A graphical user interface for Wget on MS Windows has been developed by Jens Roesner and is available from http://www.jensroesner.de/wgetgui/.

Return to GNU's home page.

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Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: $Date: 2007/02/07 02:38:58 $ $Author: mattl $