There are many improvements and new features since Privoxy 3.0.6, the last stable release:
Two new actions server-header-tagger - and client-header-tagger - that can be used to create arbitrary "tags" - based on client and server headers. - These "tags" can then subsequently be used - to control the other actions used for the current request, - greatly increasing Privoxy's flexibility and selectivity. See tag patterns for more information on tags. -
Header filtering is done with dedicated header filters now. As a result - the actions "filter-client-headers" and "filter-server-headers" - that were introduced with Privoxy 3.0.5 to apply - content filters to the headers have been removed. - See the new actions server-header-filter - and client-header-filter for details. -
There are four new options for the main config file: -
allow-cgi-request-crunching - which allows requests for Privoxy's internal CGI pages to be - blocked, redirected or (un)trusted like ordinary requests. -
split-large-forms - that will work around a browser bug that caused IE6 and IE7 to - ignore the Submit button on the Privoxy's edit-actions-for-url CGI - page. -
accept-intercepted-requests - which allows to combine Privoxy with any packet filter to create an - intercepting proxy for HTTP/1.1 requests (and for HTTP/1.0 requests - with Host header set). This means clients can be forced to use - Privoxy even if their proxy settings are configured differently. -
templdir - to designate an alternate location for Privoxy's - locally customized CGI templates so that - these are not overwritten during upgrades. -
A new command line option --pre-chroot-nslookup hostname to - initialize the resolver library before chroot'ing. On some systems this - reduces the number of files that must be copied into the chroot tree. - (Patch provided by Stephen Gildea) -
The forward-override action - allows changing of the forwarding settings through the actions files. - Combined with tags, this allows to choose the forwarder based on - client headers like the User-Agent, or the request origin. -
The redirect action can now use regular - expression substitutions against the original URL. -
zlib support is now available as a compile - time option to filter compressed content. Patch provided by Wil Mahan. -
Improve various filters, and add new ones. -
Include support for RFC 3253 so that Subversion works - with Privoxy. Patch provided by Petr Kadlec. -
Logging can be completely turned off by not specifying a logfile directive. -
A number of improvements to Privoxy's internal CGI pages, including the - use of favicons for error and control pages. -
Many bugfixes, memory leaks addressed, code improvements, and logging - improvements. -
For a more detailed list of changes please have a look at the ChangeLog.
A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier - versions of Privoxy:
The recommended way to upgrade Privoxy is to backup your old - configuration files, install the new ones, verify that Privoxy - is working correctly and finally merge back your changes using - diff and maybe patch. -
There are a number of new features in each Privoxy release and - most of them have to be explicitly enabled in the configuration - files. Old configuration files obviously don't do that and due - to syntax changes using old configuration files with a new - Privoxy isn't always possible anyway. -
- Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely, - including configuration files, therefore you should really save - any important configuration files! -
- On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing configuration - files, thinking you will want to do that yourself. -
- standard.action now only includes the enabled actions. - Not all actions as before. -
In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now. - You can change that in the debug section - of the configuration file. You may also want to enable more verbose - logging until you verified that the new Privoxy version is working - as expected. -
Three other config file settings are now off by default: - enable-remote-toggle, - enable-remote-http-toggle, - and enable-edit-actions. - If you use or want these, you will need to explicitly enable them, and - be aware of the security issues involved. -
The "filter-client-headers" and - "filter-server-headers" actions that were introduced with - Privoxy 3.0.5 to apply content filters to - the headers have been removed and replaced with new actions. - See the What's New section above. -
Privoxy 3.0.26 stable is a bug-fix release for the previously released 3.0.25 + beta which introduced client-specific tags and included a couple of minor improvements.
+Bug fixes:
+Fixed crashes with "listen-addr :8118" (SF Bug #902). The regression was introduced in 3.0.25 beta and + reported by Marvin Renich in Debian bug #834941.
+General improvements:
+Log when privoxy is toggled on or off via cgi interface.
+Highlight the "Info: Now toggled " on/off log message in the Windows log viewer.
+Highlight the loading actions/filter file log message in the Windows log viewer.
+Mention client-specific tags on the toggle page as a potentionally more appropriate alternative.
+Documentation improvements:
+Update download section on the homepage. The downloads are available from the website now.
+Add sponsor FAQ.
+Remove obsolete reference to mailing lists hosted at SourceForge.
+Update the "Before the Release" section of the developer manual.
+Infrastructure improvements:
+Add perl script to generate an RSS feed for the packages Submitted by "Unknown".
+Build system improvements:
+strptime.h: fix a compiler warning about ambiguous else.
+configure.in: Check for Docbook goo on the BSDs as well.
+GNUMakefile.in: Let the dok-user target remove temporary files.
+Changes between Privoxy 3.0.25 beta and the previous release:
+Bug fixes:
+Always use the current toggle state for new requests. Previously new requests on reused connections + inherited the toggle state from the previous request even though the toggle state could have changed. + Reported by Robert Klemme.
+Fixed two buffer-overflows in the (deprecated) static pcre code. These bugs are not considered security + issues as the input is trusted. Found with afl-fuzz and ASAN.
+General improvements:
+Added support for client-specific tags which allow Privoxy admins to pre-define tags that are set for + all requests from clients that previously opted in through the CGI interface. They are useful in multi-user + setups where admins may want to allow users to disable certain actions and filters for themselves without + affecting others. In single-user setups they are useful to allow more fine-grained toggling. For example to + disable request blocking while still crunching cookies, or to disable experimental filters only. This is an + experimental feature, the syntax and behaviour may change in future versions. Sponsored by Robert + Klemme.
+Dynamic filters and taggers now support a $listen-address variable which contains the address the + request came in on. For external filters the variable is called $PRIVOXY_LISTEN_ADDRESS. Original patch + contributed by pursievro.
+Add client-header-tagger 'listen-address'.
+Include the listen-address in the log message when logging new requests. Patch contributed by + pursievro.
+Turn invalid max-client-connections values into fatal errors.
+The show-status page now shows whether or not dates before 1970 and after 2038 are expected to be + handled properly. This is mainly useful for Privoxy-Regression-Test but could also come handy when dealing + with time-related support requests.
+On Mac OS X the thread id in log messages are more likely to be unique now.
+When complaining about missing filters, the filter type is logged as well.
+A couple of harmless coverity warnings were silenced (CID #161202, CID #161203, CID #161211).
+Action file improvements:
+Filtering is disabled for Range requests to let download resumption and Windows updates work with the + default configuration.
+Unblock ".ardmediathek.de/". Reported by ThTomate in #932.
+Documentation improvements:
+Add FAQ entry for crashes caused by memory limits.
+Remove obsolete FAQ entry about a bug in PHP 4.2.3.
+Mention the new mailing lists were appropriate. As the archives have not been migrated, continue to + mention the archives at SF in the contacting section for now.
+Note that the templates should be adjusted if Privoxy is running as intercepting proxy without getting + all requests.
+A bunch of links were converted to https://.
+Rephrase onion service paragraph to make it more obvious that Tor is involved and that the whole website + (and not just the homepage) is available as onion service.
+Streamline the "More information" section on the homepage further by additionally ditching the link to + the 'See also' section of the user manual. The section contains mostly links that are directly reachable + from the homepage already and the rest is not significant enough to get a link from the homepage.
+Change the add-header{} example to set the DNT header and use a complete section to make copy and + pasting more convenient. Add a comment to make it obvious that adding the header is not recommended for + obvious reasons. Using the DNT header as example was suggested by Leo Wzukw.
+Streamline the support-and-service template Instead of linking to the various support trackers (whose + URLs hopefully change soon), link to the contact section of the user manual to increase the chances that + users actually read it.
+Add a FAQ entry for tainted sockets.
+More sections in the documentation have stable URLs now.
+FAQ: Explain why 'ping config.privoxy.org' is not expected to reach a local Privoxy installation.
+Note that donations done through Zwiebelfreunde e.V. currently can't be checked automatically.
+Updated section regarding starting Privoxy under OS X.
+Use dedicated start instructions for FreeBSD and ElectroBSD.
+Removed release instructions for AIX. They haven't been working for years and unsurprisingly nobody + seems to care.
+Removed obsolete reference to the solaris-dist target.
+Updated the release instructions for FreeBSD.
+Removed unfinished release instructions for Amiga OS and HP-UX 11.
+Added a pointer to the Cygwin Time Machine for getting the last release of Cygwin version 1.5 to use for + building Privoxy on Windows.
+Various typos have been fixed.
+Infrastructure improvements:
+The website is no longer hosted at SourceForge and can be reached through https now.
+The mailing lists at SourceForge have been deprecated, you can subscribe to the new ones at: + https://lists.privoxy.org/
+Migrating the remaining services from SourceForge is work in progress (TODO list item #53).
+Build system improvements:
+Add configure argument to optimistically redefine FD_SETSIZE with the intent to change the maximum + number of client connections Privoxy can handle. Only works with some libcs. Sponsored by Robert + Klemme.
+Let the tarball-dist target skip files in ".git".
+Let the tarball-dist target work in cwds other than current.
+Make the 'clean' target faster when run from a git repository.
+Include tools in the generic distribution.
+Let the gen-dist target work in cwds other than current.
+Sort find output that is used for distribution tarballs to get reproducible results.
+Don't add '-src' to the name of the tar ball generated by the gen-dist target. The package isn't a + source distribution but a binary package. While at it, use a variable for the name to reduce the chances + that the various references get out of sync and fix the gen-upload target which was looking in the wrong + directory.
+Add regression-tests.action to the files that are distributed.
+The gen-dist target which was broken since 2002 (r1.92) has been fixed.
+Remove genclspec.sh which has been obsolete since 2009.
+Remove obsolete reference to Redhat spec file.
+Remove the obsolete announce target which has been commented out years ago.
+Let rsync skip files if the checksums match.
+Privoxy-Regression-Test:
+Add a "Default level offset" directive which can be used to change the default level by a given value. + This directive affects all tests located after it until the end of the file or a another "Default level + offset" directive is reached. The purpose of this directive is to make it more convenient to skip similar + tests in a given file without having to remove or disable the tests completely.
+Let test level 17 depend on FEATURE_64_BIT_TIME_T instead of FEATURE_PTHREAD which has no direct + connection to the time_t size.
+Fix indentation in perldoc examples.
+Don't overlook directives in the first line of the action file.
+Bump version to 0.7.
+Fix detection of the Privoxy version now that https:// is used for the website.
+A quick list of things to be aware of before upgrading from earlier versions of Privoxy:
+The recommended way to upgrade Privoxy is to backup your old + configuration files, install the new ones, verify that Privoxy is working + correctly and finally merge back your changes using diff and maybe + patch.
+There are a number of new features in each Privoxy release and most of + them have to be explicitly enabled in the configuration files. Old configuration files obviously don't do + that and due to syntax changes using old configuration files with a new Privoxy isn't always possible anyway.
+Note that some installers remove earlier versions completely, including configuration files, therefore you + should really save any important configuration files!
+On the other hand, other installers don't overwrite existing configuration files, thinking you will want + to do that yourself.
+In the default configuration only fatal errors are logged now. You can change that in the debug section of the configuration file. You may also want to enable more verbose + logging until you verified that the new Privoxy version is working as + expected.
+Three other config file settings are now off by default: enable-remote-toggle, enable-remote-http-toggle, and enable-edit-actions. If you use or want these, you will need to + explicitly enable them, and be aware of the security issues involved.
+