Wget Feature Specifications

This page holds feature specifications and related discussions, for possible future functionality in GNU Wget.

Note: this page is not the proper place to submit feature requests; each item here should already be tracked in the BugTracker, and should already have been confirmed (set to the "Confirmed" state) by a developer.

Even if the bug report exists and is confirmed, it is not automatically a candidate for inclusion here; this page is specifically for features that require planning and discussion to implement.

Current Generation Features

Feature specifications for Wget 1.x

• /HttpAuthentication	RFC 2617-compliant authentication in Wget
  /ContentFilters	Pipelining to other processes, to filter HTML before link-reaps, to handle link-reaping, for both HTML and non-HTML content, or translate URIs to local filenames.
  /InitialHeadRequests	Specification for when Wget should send an initial HEAD request prior to a potential GET request
  /IriSupport	Support for internationalized URIs
  /SessionInfoDataBase	Automatic saving of information from a Wget session, for tracking important headers, especially Content-Type and ETag. Also maps between local filenames and the original URI, for timestamp and content-length-checking purposes
  /Testing	Changes to make to the way automated testing works in Wget

Next Generation Features

Feature specifications for a future, "next-generation" Wget (2.x?)

• /AbstractedFileSystem	Abstract "file system" layer that handles output of downloaded items; enables support for such things as downloading-to-tarball, or to multipart/related archives, etc.
  /ArgumentConsistency	Clean up options for commandline and configuration
  /ModularTransportLayers	A way to specify arbitrary protocols for the transport layer—even arbitrary programs!
  /MultipleSimultaneousConnections	Support for keeping multiple connections open at a time
  /PathSpecificConfig	Support for associating configuration options with specific URIs
  /Plugins	An API for developers to write their own dynamically-loaded plugins
  /RequestPipelining	Pipelining requests in HTTP/1.1, to speed up time between responses
  /LocalizedOptionNames	Support for option and .wgetrc-names in alternative languages to English.
  /Scripting	Allow run-time decisions through script code.

Unofficially Supported

Features that will not officially be part of canonical Wget, but which will be supplied as plugins for Wget. It is expected that these will be provided as separate packages, apart from the core Wget distribution.

• /JavaScript	A level of support for JavaScript, allowing for downloads of resources that would be fetched through JS interactions
  /Metalink	Support for the Metalink specification, providing alternative download locations, and possibilities for download accelerations