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wget/TODO
2003-10-08 08:17:26 -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.
* Currently Wget mirrors remote FTP permissions whenever it retrieves
the directory listing. This is undesirable for most users, as
permissions like "664" are frequently used on the servers, which
might not be what the user wants. Wget should be changed not to
mirror remote FTP permissions by default. There should be a new
option add an option that enables this back on.
* Honor `Content-Disposition: XXX; filename="FILE"' when creating the
file name. If possible, try not to break `-nc' and friends when
doing that.
* Should allow retries with multiple downloads when using -O on
regular files. As the source comment says: "A possible solution to
[rewind not working with multiple downloads] would be to remember
the file position in the output document and to seek to that
position, instead of rewinding."
But the above won't work for -O/dev/stdout, when stdout is a pipe.
An even better solution would be to simply keep writing to the same
file descriptor each time, instead of reopening it in append mode.
* 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.
* 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 might be workable).
* 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.
* Try to devise a scheme so that, when password is unknown, Wget asks
the user for one.
* 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 it look at mime.types/mimecap file for 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. 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.
* 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.
* Add option to clobber existing file names (no `.N' suffixes).
* Introduce real "boolean" options. Every `--foo' setting should have
a corresponding `--no-foo' that turns off. This is useful even for
options turned off by default, because the default can be reversed
in `.wgetrc'. Get rid of `--foo=no'. Short options would be
handled as `-x' vs. `-nx'.
* Add option to only list wildcard matches without doing the download.
* Handle MIME types correctly. There should be an option to (not)
retrieve files based on MIME types, e.g. `--accept-types=image/*'.
* Allow time-stamping by arbitrary date.
* Allow size limit to files (perhaps with an option to download oversize files
up through the limit or not at all, to get more functionality than [u]limit.
* Download to .in* when mirroring.
* Add an option to delete or move no-longer-existent files when mirroring.
* Implement uploading (--upload URL?) in FTP and HTTP.
* Rewrite FTP code to allow for easy addition of new commands. It
should probably be coded as a simple DFA engine.
* Make HTTP timestamping use If-Modified-Since facility.
* Add more protocols (e.g. gopher and news), 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.