14 DAY TRIAL // Giuseppe Scrivano, the maintainer of the open-source GNU wget command-line download manager utility for GNU/Linux and other UNIX operating systems, has announced the release of wget 1.17.
According to the release notes, GNU wget 1.17 is mostly a release that brings in a few interesting features, among which we can mention support for the HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) web security policy mechanism through the implementation of the --hsts and --hsts-file options.
Additionally, the new wget release adds support for the FTPS (FTP Secure) protocol, support for the --if-modified-since option, as well as support for the --rejected-log option, which can be used to log the reasons URLs are being rejected to a separate file.
Among other interesting features added in GNU wget 1.17, we can mention support for metalinks by implementing the --metalink-over-http and --input-metalink options, the addition of an option that lets users restrict filenames under VMS, along with the --convert-file-only option, which can be used for converting only the filename part of a URL.
Due to privacy concerns, the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) passive to active fallback mechanism has been removed from wget starting with version 1.17. Also, the program has been updated to no longer download or save files if errors occur while using the --spider option.
If you're using wget in your GNU/Linux or Mac OS X operating system, you can download the GNU wget 1.17 sources right now from Softpedia and start compiling the software by hand. Otherwise, you can check for an update in the default software repositories in the coming days.