Sensible Open Source

Grab, Compile and Install GNU WGET 4 OS X

« H E SOS :: OS X Tools :: email
posted 20 May 2007, Sunday
Look, if you're not using wget you're missing out on a fabulous tool.
 
You know those embedded objects you can't save when you have a url in your source? Well, wget can grab 'em quicker than ricochet rabbit.
 
The instructions below provide you with the proper way to download the package, compile the source and install wget into /usr/local/bin. If you choose another directory to install to, that is entirely up to you!
  1. FTP SITE: ftp://ftp.gnu.org
  2. Navigate to the latest version ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/wget-#.#.tar.gz
  3. Unpack the tarball: tar xzf wget-#.#.tar.gz
  4. Unpacking creates a directory named wget-#.#. Where the source files are despoited
  5. Change directories wget-#.# ie: cd wget-#.#/
  6. Execute the configuration script to prepare to build wget: ./configure
  7. Execute the Build: make
  8. Execute the install process: sudo make install
  9. The wget binary, if all things go well, should be in /usr/local/bin folder.

 

Cheers, sos

 Followup:

 

Here's a kool feature that many people don't seem to remember or know of when using wget.

If you want to download a site for later reading, on a plane, disconnected for any reason you can issue a wget command as follows:

 

wget -m -N -l inf --no-remove-listing         /      http://www.somesite.com/information/i_need_to_read_on_the_plan_toc.html

-m stands for mirror and basically instructs wget to recurse (-r) the URL and ignore files unless than are newer than the local time (-N) and recurse to an infinite level (-l inf) getting all documents from all links and do not remove .listing files (--no-remove-listing).

 

It's clean, its fast and off you go on your way with no care for connection during your time away. 

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