Hey Emacs, this is -*- outline -*- mode
-This is the todo list for Wget. I don't have any time-table of when I
-plan to implement these features; this is just a list of things I'd
-like to see in Wget. I'll work on some of them myself, and I will
-accept patches in their direction. The items are not listed in any
-particular order. Not all of them are user-visible changes.
-
-* Make `-k' convert <base href=...> too.
+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 a concept of "boolean" options. For instance, every
- boolean option `--foo' would have a `--no-foo' equivalent for
- turning it off. Get rid of `--foo=no' stuff. Short options would
- be handled as `-x' vs. `-nx'.
-
-* Implement "thermometer" display (not all that hard; use an
- alternative show_progress() if the output goes to a terminal.)
-
* Add option to only list wildcard matches without doing the download.
-* Add case-insensitivity as an option.
-
-* Add option to download all files needed to display a web page
- (images, etc.)
-
* Handle MIME types correctly. There should be an option to (not)
retrieve files based on MIME types, e.g. `--accept-types=image/*'.
-* Implement "persistent" retrieving. In "persistent" mode Wget should
- treat most of the errors as transient.
-
* Allow time-stamping by arbitrary date.
-* Fix Unix directory parser to allow for spaces in file names.
-
-* Allow size limit to files.
-
-* -k should convert convert relative references to absolute if not
- downloaded.
-
-* Recognize HTML comments correctly. Add more options for handling
- bogus HTML found all over the 'net.
-
-* Implement breadth-first retrieval.
+* 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 a switch to avoid downloading multiple files (e.g. x and
- x.gz).
+* 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.
-* Recognize more FTP servers (VMS).
-
* Make HTTP timestamping use If-Modified-Since facility.
-* Implement better spider options.
-
* Add more protocols (e.g. gopher and news), implementing them in a
modular fashion.
-* Implement a concept of "packages" a la mirror.
-
-* Implement correct RFC1808 URL parsing.
-
-* Implement HTTP cookies.
-
-* Implement more HTTP/1.1 bells and whistles (ETag, Content-MD5 etc.)
-
-* Support SSL encryption through SSLeay or OpenSSL.
+* 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.
projects / wget / blobdiff