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Siddhant Goel wrote:
> Hi.
> I guess my concepts were twisted. I have made a new proposal,
> incorporating what all you have suggested me, and what all I have been
> able to grasp.
> I have proposed my solution here -
> http://siddhantgoel.googlepages.com/gsoc_gnu.pdf .
> Please tell me if this one is fine, or if something needs to be
> added/removed/edited.

Thanks, Siddhant; I think this version is much improved over the
previous attempt.

I'd probably try not to get into the details of what the session db file
might look like; that's probably one of the things we'd need to define
as part of our initial discussions. I'm guessing that the list of
entries in your abstract are probably intended as only examples of the
_kind_ of data that would go in there, rather than the particulars of
how that data should look, but if I were you I'd say that explicitly.
(Also, that sort of information is probably not so appropriate in the
"Abstract", which is usually intended to be a very high-level
description of what the feature is).

To comment on some of the specific items you have in that list: I'm not
sure that "Download #" will be a useful piece of information, except
perhaps for use in identifying a resource across interleaved entries.
The "local_filename" and "localpath" entries seem redundant to me. And
"chain_of_redirects" doesn't map very well to the expectation that Wget
write available information as soon as it can, so that as much
information is available as possible when it is read back, even if Wget
was interrupted. The chain of redirects will probably be better
implemented as separate entries for each redirect.

A boolean "download_status" strikes me as not informative enough for
what we will want it for. It would be very useful to distinguish between
a download that failed due to a 404 Not Found and one that failed due to
a 403 Forbidden; as well as distinguishing between loss of connections,
failure to connect, proxy-specific failures, and name resolution failures.

All in all, though, it's best not to focus on the details of what
entries might _look_ like, but how they will enable Wget to _use_ them.
That is, rather than saying that the session db will have "localpath" or
"chain_of_redirects" entries, it's more productive to say that Wget will
be able to be able to find the path of the locally-downloaded file
corresponding to any URI from the single URI or chain of redirected URIs
that; or that Wget will determine what files remain to be downloaded
and/or parsed to continue where a previous session left off.

It'd be really nice to touch on a little bit of _how_ Wget will handle
looking up a local pathname from a chain of redirects (i.e., if you're
not going to do it by using grep for each download, how _will_ you
accomplish it?).

It would also be good to talk a little about compatibility issues, such
as how Wget could handle session dbs that were generated from newer
versions of Wget, that might specify information that Wget doesn't know
how to process.

Any sample code from anything you've worked on in the past, even if it's
incomplete or now embarrasses you (that's not a problem: just explain
how you would improve it) would be very helpful; something to help
determine whether you possess the appropriate skillset to handle the
task you're proposing to implement.

- --
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer,
and GNU Wget Project Maintainer.
http://micah.cowan.name/
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