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 * Currently Wget mirrors remote FTP permissions whenever it retrieves
12 the directory listing. This is undesirable for most users, as
13 permissions like "664" are frequently used on the servers, which
14 might not be what the user wants. Wget should be changed not to
15 mirror remote FTP permissions by default. There should be a new
16 option add an option that enables this back on.
18 * Implement a `--disable-dns-cache' option that disables DNS caching.
19 It is trivial to implement; simply avoid calling cache_host_lookup
20 at the end of lookup_host.
22 * Honor `Content-Disposition: XXX; filename="FILE"' when creating the
25 * Should allow retries with multiple downloads when using -O on
26 regular files. As the source comment says: "A possible solution to
27 [rewind not working with multiple downloads] would be to remember
28 the file position in the output document and to seek to that
29 position, instead of rewinding."
31 * Wget shouldn't delete rejected files that were not downloaded, but
32 just found on disk because of `-nc'. For example, `wget -r -nc
33 -A.gif URL' should allow the user to get all the GIFs without
34 removing any of the existing HTML files.
36 * Be careful not to lose username/password information given for the
37 URL on the command line.
39 * Add a --range parameter allowing you to explicitly specify a range of bytes to
40 get from a file over HTTP (FTP only supports ranges ending at the end of the
41 file, though forcibly disconnecting from the server at the desired endpoint
44 * If multiple FTP URLs are specified that are on the same host, Wget should
45 re-use the connection rather than opening a new one for each file.
47 * Try to devise a scheme so that, when password is unknown, Wget asks
50 * If -c used with -N, check to make sure a file hasn't changed on the server
51 before "continuing" to download it (preventing a bogus hybrid file).
53 * Generalize --html-extension to something like --mime-extensions and have it
54 look at mime.types/mimecap file for preferred extension. Non-HTML files with
55 filenames changed this way would be re-downloaded each time despite -N unless
56 .orig files were saved for them. Since .orig would contain the same data as
57 non-.orig, the latter could be just a link to the former. Another possibility
58 would be to implement a per-directory database called something like
59 .wget_url_mapping containing URLs and their corresponding filenames.
61 * When spanning hosts, there's no way to say that you are only interested in
62 files in a certain directory on _one_ of the hosts (-I and -X apply to all).
63 Perhaps -I and -X should take an optional hostname before the directory?
65 * Add an option to not encode special characters like ' ' and '~' when saving
66 local files. Would be good to have a mode that encodes all special characters
67 (as now), one that encodes none (as above), and one that only encodes a
68 character if it was encoded in the original URL (e.g. %20 but not %7E).
70 * --retr-symlinks should cause wget to traverse links to directories too.
72 * Make wget return non-zero status in more situations, like incorrect HTTP auth.
74 * Make -K compare X.orig to X and move the former on top of the latter if
75 they're the same, rather than leaving identical .orig files laying around.
77 * Make `-k' check for files that were downloaded in the past and convert links
78 to them in newly-downloaded documents.
80 * Add option to clobber existing file names (no `.N' suffixes).
82 * Introduce a concept of "boolean" options. For instance, every
83 boolean option `--foo' would have a `--no-foo' equivalent for
84 turning it off. Get rid of `--foo=no' stuff. Short options would
85 be handled as `-x' vs. `-nx'.
87 * Add option to only list wildcard matches without doing the download.
89 * Add case-insensitivity as an option.
91 * Handle MIME types correctly. There should be an option to (not)
92 retrieve files based on MIME types, e.g. `--accept-types=image/*'.
94 * Implement "persistent" retrieving. In "persistent" mode Wget should
95 treat most of the errors as transient.
97 * Allow time-stamping by arbitrary date.
99 * Allow size limit to files (perhaps with an option to download oversize files
100 up through the limit or not at all, to get more functionality than [u]limit.
102 * Download to .in* when mirroring.
104 * Add an option to delete or move no-longer-existent files when mirroring.
106 * Implement uploading (--upload URL?) in FTP and HTTP.
108 * Rewrite FTP code to allow for easy addition of new commands. It
109 should probably be coded as a simple DFA engine.
111 * Make HTTP timestamping use If-Modified-Since facility.
113 * Implement better spider options.
115 * Add more protocols (e.g. gopher and news), implementing them in a
118 * Implement a concept of "packages" a la mirror.
120 * Add a "rollback" option to have continued retrieval throw away a
121 configurable number of bytes at the end of a file before resuming
122 download. Apparently, some stupid proxies insert a "transfer
123 interrupted" string we need to get rid of.
125 * When using --accept and --reject, you can end up with empty directories. Have
126 Wget any such at the end.