1 Hey Emacs, this is -*- outline -*- mode
3 This is the to-do list for Wget. There is no timetable of when we
4 plan to implement these features -- this is just a list of features
5 we'd like to see in Wget, as well as a list of problems that need
6 fixing. Patches to implement these items are likely to be accepted.
7 The items are not listed in any particular order (except that
8 recently-added items may tend towards the top). Not all of these
9 represent user-visible changes.
11 * Should allow retries with multiple downloads when using -O on
12 regular files. As the source comment says: "A possible solution to
13 [rewind not working with multiple downloads] would be to remember
14 the file position in the output document and to seek to that
15 position, instead of rewinding."
17 * Wget shouldn't delete rejected files that were not downloaded, but
18 just found on disk because of `-nc'. For example, `wget -r -nc
19 -A.gif URL' should allow the user to get all the GIFs without
20 removing any of the existing HTML files.
22 * Be careful not to lose username/password information given for the
23 URL on the command line.
25 * Support FWTK firewalls. It should work like this: if ftp_proxy is
26 set to an ftp URL, Wget should assume the use of an FWTK firewall.
27 It should connect to the proxy URL, log in as username@target-site,
28 and continue as usual.
30 * Add a --range parameter allowing you to explicitly specify a range of bytes to
31 get from a file over HTTP (FTP only supports ranges ending at the end of the
32 file, though forcibly disconnecting from the server at the desired endpoint
35 * If multiple FTP URLs are specified that are on the same host, Wget should
36 re-use the connection rather than opening a new one for each file.
38 * Try to devise a scheme so that, when password is unknown, Wget asks
41 * If -c used with -N, check to make sure a file hasn't changed on the server
42 before "continuing" to download it (preventing a bogus hybrid file).
44 * Generalize --html-extension to something like --mime-extensions and have it
45 look at mime.types/mimecap file for preferred extension. Non-HTML files with
46 filenames changed this way would be re-downloaded each time despite -N unless
47 .orig files were saved for them. Since .orig would contain the same data as
48 non-.orig, the latter could be just a link to the former. Another possibility
49 would be to implement a per-directory database called something like
50 .wget_url_mapping containing URLs and their corresponding filenames.
52 * When spanning hosts, there's no way to say that you are only interested in
53 files in a certain directory on _one_ of the hosts (-I and -X apply to all).
54 Perhaps -I and -X should take an optional hostname before the directory?
56 * Add an option to not encode special characters like ' ' and '~' when saving
57 local files. Would be good to have a mode that encodes all special characters
58 (as now), one that encodes none (as above), and one that only encodes a
59 character if it was encoded in the original URL (e.g. %20 but not %7E).
61 * --retr-symlinks should cause wget to traverse links to directories too.
63 * Make wget return non-zero status in more situations, like incorrect HTTP auth.
65 * Make -K compare X.orig to X and move the former on top of the latter if
66 they're the same, rather than leaving identical .orig files laying around.
68 * Make `-k' check for files that were downloaded in the past and convert links
69 to them in newly-downloaded documents.
71 * Add option to clobber existing file names (no `.N' suffixes).
73 * Introduce a concept of "boolean" options. For instance, every
74 boolean option `--foo' would have a `--no-foo' equivalent for
75 turning it off. Get rid of `--foo=no' stuff. Short options would
76 be handled as `-x' vs. `-nx'.
78 * Add option to only list wildcard matches without doing the download.
80 * Add case-insensitivity as an option.
82 * Handle MIME types correctly. There should be an option to (not)
83 retrieve files based on MIME types, e.g. `--accept-types=image/*'.
85 * Implement "persistent" retrieving. In "persistent" mode Wget should
86 treat most of the errors as transient.
88 * Allow time-stamping by arbitrary date.
90 * Allow size limit to files (perhaps with an option to download oversize files
91 up through the limit or not at all, to get more functionality than [u]limit.
93 * Download to .in* when mirroring.
95 * Add an option to delete or move no-longer-existent files when mirroring.
97 * Implement uploading (--upload URL?) in FTP and HTTP.
99 * Rewrite FTP code to allow for easy addition of new commands. It
100 should probably be coded as a simple DFA engine.
102 * Make HTTP timestamping use If-Modified-Since facility.
104 * Implement better spider options.
106 * Add more protocols (e.g. gopher and news), implementing them in a
109 * Implement a concept of "packages" a la mirror.
111 * Add a "rollback" option to have continued retrieval throw away a
112 configurable number of bytes at the end of a file before resuming
113 download. Apparently, some stupid proxies insert a "transfer
114 interrupted" string we need to get rid of.
116 * When using --accept and --reject, you can end up with empty directories. Have
117 Wget any such at the end.