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wget/TODO
2005-06-22 17:17:27 -07:00

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Hey Emacs, this is -*- outline -*- mode
This is the to-do list for GNU Wget. There is no timetable of when we
plan to implement these features -- this is just a list of features
we'd like to see in Wget, as well as a list of problems that need
fixing. Patches to implement these items are likely to be accepted,
especially if they follow the coding convention outlined in PATCHES
and if they patch the documentation as well.
The items are not listed in any particular order (except that
recently-added items may tend towards the top). Not all of these
represent user-visible changes.
* Change the file name generation logic so that redirects can't dictate
file names (but redirects should still be followed). By default, file
names should be generated only from the URL the user provided. However,
with an appropriate flag, Wget will allow the remote server to specify
the file name, either through redirection (as is always the case now)
or via the increasingly popular header `Content-Disposition: XXX;
filename="FILE"'.
The file name should be generated and displayed *after* processing
the server's response, not before, as it is done now. This will
allow trivial implementation of -nc, of O_EXCL when opening the
file, --html-extension will stop being a horrible hack, and so on.
* -O should be respected, with no exceptions. It should work in
conjunction with -N and -k. (This is hard to achieve in the current
code base.) Ancillary files, such as directory listings and such,
should be downloaded either directly to memory, or to /tmp.
* Implement digest and NTLM authorization for proxies. This is harder
than it seems because it requires some rethinking of the HTTP code.
* Rethink the interaction between recur.c (the recursive download code)
and HTTP/FTP code. Ideally, the downloading code should have a way
to retrieve a file and, optionally, to specify a list of URLs for
continuing the "recursive" download. FTP code will surely benefit
from such a restructuring because its current incarnation is way too
smart for its own good.
* Both HTTP and FTP connections should be first-class objects that can
be reused after a download is done. Currently information about both
is kept implicitly on the stack, and forgotten after each download.
* Restructure the FTP code to remove massive amounts of code duplication
and repetition. Remove all the "intelligence" and make it work as
outlined in the previous bullet.
* Add support for SFTP. Teach Wget about newer features of more
recent FTP servers in general, such as receiving reliable checksums
and timestamps. This can be used to implement really robust
downloads.
* Wget shouldn't delete rejected files that were not downloaded, but
just found on disk because of `-nc'. For example, `wget -r -nc
-A.gif URL' should allow the user to get all the GIFs without
removing any of the existing HTML files.
* Be careful not to lose username/password information given for the
URL on the command line. For example,
wget -r http://username:password@server/path/ should send that
username and password to all content under /path/ (this is apparently
what browsers do).
* Don't send credentials using "Basic" authorization before the server
has a chance to tell us that it supports Digest or NTLM!
* Add a --range parameter allowing you to explicitly specify a range
of bytes to get from a file over HTTP (FTP only supports ranges
ending at the end of the file, though forcibly disconnecting from
the server at the desired endpoint would work). For example,
--range=n-m would specify inclusive range (a la the Range header),
and --range=n:m would specify exclusive range (a la Python's
slices). -c should work with --range by assuming the range is
partially downloaded on disk, and contuing from there (effectively
requesting a smaller range).
* If multiple FTP URLs are specified that are on the same host, Wget should
re-use the connection rather than opening a new one for each file.
This should be easy provided the above restructuring of FTP code that
would include the FTP connection becoming a first-class objects.
* Try to devise a scheme so that, when password is unknown, Wget asks
the user for one. This is harder than it seems because the password
may be requested by some page encountered long after the user has
left Wget to run.
* If -c used with -N, check to make sure a file hasn't changed on the server
before "continuing" to download it (preventing a bogus hybrid file).
* Generalize --html-extension to something like --mime-extensions and
have consult mime.types for the preferred extension. Non-HTML files
with filenames changed this way would be re-downloaded each time
despite -N unless .orig files were saved for them. (#### Why? The
HEAD request we use to implement -N would still be able to construct
the correct file name based on the declared Content-Type.)
Since .orig would contain the same data as non-.orig, the latter
could be just a link to the former. Another possibility would be to
implement a per-directory database called something like
.wget_url_mapping containing URLs and their corresponding filenames.
* When spanning hosts, there's no way to say that you are only
interested in files in a certain directory on _one_ of the hosts (-I
and -X apply to all). Perhaps -I and -X should take an optional
"hostname:" before the directory?
* --retr-symlinks should cause wget to traverse links to directories too.
* Make wget return non-zero status in more situations, like incorrect HTTP auth.
Create and document different exit statuses for different errors.
* Make -K compare X.orig to X and move the former on top of the latter if
they're the same, rather than leaving identical .orig files laying around.
* Make `-k' check for files that were downloaded in the past and convert links
to them in newly-downloaded documents.
* Devise a way for options to have effect on a per-URL basis. This is very
natural for some options, such as --post-data. It could be implemented
simply by having more than one struct options.
* Add option to clobber existing file names (no `.N' suffixes).
* Add option to only list wildcard matches without doing the download. The same
could be generalized to support something like apt's --print-uri.
* Handle MIME types correctly. There should be an option to (not)
retrieve files based on MIME types, e.g. `--accept-types=image/*'.
This would work for FTP by translating file extensions to MIME types
using mime.types.
* Allow time-stamping by arbitrary date. For example,
wget --if-modified-after DATE URL.
* Make quota apply to single files, preferrably so that the download of an
oversized file is not attempted at all.
* When updating an existing mirror, download to temporary files (such as .in*)
and rename the file after the download is done.
* Add an option to delete or move no-longer-existent files when mirroring.
* Implement uploading (--upload=FILE URL?) in FTP and HTTP. A beginning of
this is available in the form of --post-file, but it should be expanded to
be really useful.
* Make HTTP timestamping use If-Modified-Since facility.
* Add more protocols (such as news or possibly some of the streaming
protocols), implementing them in a modular fashion.
* Add a "rollback" option to have continued retrieval throw away a
configurable number of bytes at the end of a file before resuming
download. Apparently, some stupid proxies insert a "transfer
interrupted" string we need to get rid of.