1 Hey Emacs, this is -*- outline -*- mode
3 This is the to-do list for GNU 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 especially if they follow the coding convention outlined in PATCHES
8 and if they patch the documentation as well.
10 The items are not listed in any particular order (except that
11 recently-added items may tend towards the top). Not all of these
12 represent user-visible changes.
14 * Honor `Content-Disposition: XXX; filename="FILE"' when creating the
15 file name. If possible, try not to break `-nc' and friends when
18 * Wget shouldn't delete rejected files that were not downloaded, but
19 just found on disk because of `-nc'. For example, `wget -r -nc
20 -A.gif URL' should allow the user to get all the GIFs without
21 removing any of the existing HTML files.
23 * Be careful not to lose username/password information given for the
24 URL on the command line.
26 * Add a --range parameter allowing you to explicitly specify a range
27 of bytes to get from a file over HTTP (FTP only supports ranges
28 ending at the end of the file, though forcibly disconnecting from
29 the server at the desired endpoint might be workable).
31 * If multiple FTP URLs are specified that are on the same host, Wget should
32 re-use the connection rather than opening a new one for each file.
34 * Try to devise a scheme so that, when password is unknown, Wget asks
37 * If -c used with -N, check to make sure a file hasn't changed on the server
38 before "continuing" to download it (preventing a bogus hybrid file).
40 * Generalize --html-extension to something like --mime-extensions and
41 have it look at mime.types/mimecap file for preferred extension.
42 Non-HTML files with filenames changed this way would be
43 re-downloaded each time despite -N unless .orig files were saved for
44 them. Since .orig would contain the same data as non-.orig, the
45 latter could be just a link to the former. Another possibility
46 would be to implement a per-directory database called something like
47 .wget_url_mapping containing URLs and their corresponding filenames.
49 * When spanning hosts, there's no way to say that you are only interested in
50 files in a certain directory on _one_ of the hosts (-I and -X apply to all).
51 Perhaps -I and -X should take an optional hostname before the directory?
53 * --retr-symlinks should cause wget to traverse links to directories too.
55 * Make wget return non-zero status in more situations, like incorrect HTTP auth.
57 * Make -K compare X.orig to X and move the former on top of the latter if
58 they're the same, rather than leaving identical .orig files laying around.
60 * Make `-k' check for files that were downloaded in the past and convert links
61 to them in newly-downloaded documents.
63 * Add option to clobber existing file names (no `.N' suffixes).
65 * Add option to only list wildcard matches without doing the download.
67 * Handle MIME types correctly. There should be an option to (not)
68 retrieve files based on MIME types, e.g. `--accept-types=image/*'.
70 * Allow time-stamping by arbitrary date.
72 * Allow size limit to files (perhaps with an option to download oversize files
73 up through the limit or not at all, to get more functionality than [u]limit.
75 * Download to .in* when mirroring.
77 * Add an option to delete or move no-longer-existent files when mirroring.
79 * Implement uploading (--upload URL?) in FTP and HTTP.
81 * Rewrite FTP code to allow for easy addition of new commands. It
82 should probably be coded as a simple DFA engine.
84 * Make HTTP timestamping use If-Modified-Since facility.
86 * Add more protocols (e.g. gopher and news), implementing them in a
89 * Add a "rollback" option to have continued retrieval throw away a
90 configurable number of bytes at the end of a file before resuming
91 download. Apparently, some stupid proxies insert a "transfer
92 interrupted" string we need to get rid of.