This is the to-do list for Wget. There is no timetable of when we plan to
implement these features -- this is just a list of things it'd be nice to see in
Wget. Patches to implement any of these items would be gladly accepted. The
-items are not listed in any particular order. Not all of them represent
-user-visible changes.
+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.
-* Make wget return non-zero status in more situations, like incorrect HTTP auth.
+* -p should probably go "_two_ more hops" on <FRAMESET> pages.
+
+* Only normal link-following recursion should respect -np. Page-requisite
+ recursion should not. When -np -p is specified, Wget should still retrieve
+ requisite images and such on the server, even if they aren't in that directory
+ or a subdirectory of it. Likewise, -H -np -p should retrieve requisite files
+ from other hosts.
+
+* 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).
+
+* RFC 1738 says that if logging on to an FTP server puts you in a directory
+ other than '/', the way to specify a file relative to '/' in a URL (let's use
+ "/bin/ls" in this example) is "ftp://host/%2Fbin/ls". Wget needs to support
+ this (and ideally not consider "ftp://host//bin/ls" to be equivalent, as that
+ would equate to the command "CWD " rather than "CWD /"). To accomodate people
+ used to broken FTP clients like Internet Explorer and Netscape, if
+ "ftp://host/bin/ls" doesn't exist, Wget should try again (perhaps under
+ control of an option), acting as if the user had typed "ftp://host/%2Fbin/ls".
+
+* 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.
+
+* Limit the number of successive redirection to max. 20 or so.
+
+* If -c used on a file that's already completely downloaded, don't re-download
+ it (unless normal --timestamping processing would cause you to do so).
+
+* 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).
+
+* Take a look at
+ <http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/norobots-rfc.html>
+ and support the new directives.
+
+* 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.
-* Timestamps are sometimes not copied over on files retrieved by FTP.
+* 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?
-* Wget does not currently handle "fragment identifiers" (the part of a URL
- starting with the '#' character) properly.
+* Add an option to not encode special characters like ' ' and '~' when saving
+ local files. Would be good to have a mode that encodes all special characters
+ (as now), one that encodes none (as above), and one that only encodes a
+ character if it was encoded in the original URL (e.g. %20 but not %7E).
+
+* --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.
-* Add an option to save all text/html files with a .html extension so that when
- grabbing the output of a dynamically-generated remote page, you'll end up with
- a filename that will cause _your_ webserver to realize the saved static HTML
- file isn't text/plain (or an illegal CGI script in the case of *.cgi).
-
-* Allow mirroring of FTP URLs where logging in puts you somewhere else besides
- '/'.
+* If CGI output is saved to a file, e.g. cow.cgi?param, -k needs to change the
+ '?' to a "%3F" in links to that file to avoid passing part of the filename as
+ a parameter.
* Make `-k' convert <base href=...> too.
* Make `-k' check for files that were downloaded in the past and convert links
to them in newly-downloaded documents.
-* -k should convert convert relative references to absolute if not downloaded.
-
-* -k should convert "hostless absolute" URLs, like <A HREF="/index.html">.
- However, Brian McMahon <bm@iucr.org> wants the old incorrect behavior to still
- be available as an option, as he depends on it to allow mirrors of his site to
- send CGI queries to his original site, but still get graphics off of the
- mirror site. Perhaps this would be better dealt with by adding an option to
- tell -k not to convert certain URL patterns?
-
* Add option to clobber existing file names (no `.N' suffixes).
* Introduce a concept of "boolean" options. For instance, every
* Fix Unix directory parser to allow for spaces in file names.
-* Allow size limit to files.
-
-* Recognize HTML comments correctly. Add more options for handling
- bogus HTML found all over the 'net.
+* 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.
* Implement breadth-first retrieval.
* Download to .in* when mirroring.
-* Add an option to delete or move no-longer-existent files 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).
+* Implement a switch to avoid downloading multiple files (e.g. x and x.gz).
* 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.
* 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 --continue 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.
+
+* When using --accept and --reject, you can end up with empty directories. Have
+ Wget any such at the end.
projects / wget / blobdiff