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