Wget2 as wget

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary

Replace wget with wget2 (a modern implementation of wget intended to replace wget 1.x) as the provider of wget.

Owner

Name: Neal Gompa, Michal Ruprich
Email: ngompa13@gmail.com, mruprich@redhat.com

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora Linux 40
Last updated: 2023-11-20
Announced
Discussion thread
FESCo issue: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

GNU Wget2 is the successor to GNU Wget providing a modern implementation of wget backed by a new library: libwget2. The intent to switch from wget 1.x to wget2 is to switch to an implementation that is more actively developed and provides a richer interface for leveraging wget's functionality.

Feedback

Benefit to Fedora

The major benefit of switching to wget2 is leveraging the cleaner codebase that leverages modern practices for development and maintainability, including unit tests and fuzzing as a security-sensitive component. Users will also see better support for newer protocols over time as they are more easily and quickly plumbed into wget2 than wget.

Scope

Proposal owners: Add a wget2-wget subpackage that replaces wget and ensure things don't break during mass build. Then retire wget.

Other developers: N/A

Release engineering: #11790

Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Alignment with Community Initiatives: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Upgrade/compatibility impact

When upgrading to Fedora Linux 40, systems with wget installed will be switched to wget2 via the wget2-wget package. The change should be mostly transparent to users.

Except for WARC and FTP, Wget2 is a drop-in replacement for Wget in most cases. See upstream info: Different behavior of Wget2 and Differing CLI options Wget/Wget2, and TODO.

How To Test

Users can test wget2 now by installing the package and using the wget2 command. The interface will be the interface users have with wget on upgrade.

User Experience

This change should be largely transparent to users. Some of the more esoteric options and behaviors may have changed, but the commonly used ones mostly work as they did in 1.x.

Dependencies

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Contingency Plan

Contingency mechanism: Change owners will disable wget2-wget subpackage and restore wget
Contingency deadline: Final Freeze
Blocks release? No

Documentation

The main documentation for wget2 is wget2(1) man page. There is also online documentation of the libwget2 library.