GNU wget

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Introduction to GNU wget

GNU Wget is a free software package for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the two 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:

News

The latest stable version of Wget is 1.8.2. This release fixes several bugs found in 1.8.1 and, more importantly, changes the license to allow linking Wget with the OpenSSL library. This was important to allow Debian and other distributions to distribute Wget binaries without legal hassle.

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 ftp://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

As of this writing, the documentation for Wget 1.5.3 is available in all common formats from www.gnu.org. Hopefully this will be updated to use Wget 1.8's documentation file soon.

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

The Wget mailing lists are kindly hosted at SunSITE Denmark thanks to Karsten Thygesen. They are run using the ezmlm listserver. To subscribe to them, send an email to list_name-subscribe@sunsite.dk. For instance, to subscribe to the wget-patches list send an empty mail to:
wget-patches-subscribe@sunsite.dk

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:

wget-get.3500_3517@sunsite.dk

To unsubscribe to a list, send an email to list_name-unsubscribe@sunsite.dk. For more information on list commands, send an email to list_name-help@sunsite.dk.

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, bug-wget@gnu.org, simply forwards to this list.

In addition to the above-described ezmlm commands for getting old posts, there are archives of the main Wget list at:

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:


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