1 Some Privoxy-related tasks, sorted by the time they
2 have been added, not by priority.
4 The latest version should be available at:
5 https://www.privoxy.org/gitweb/?p=privoxy.git;a=blob_plain;f=TODO;hb=HEAD
7 There's work in progress to fund development on these items using
8 donations. If you want to donate, please have a look at:
9 https://www.privoxy.org/faq/general.html#DONATE
11 1) Add more regression tests. Filters should be tested automatically
12 (variables too). Could probably reuse large parts of Privoxy-Filter-Test.
13 Note that there is currently work in progress to leverage curl's
14 test suite, patches have been submitted upstream:
15 http://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2014-06/0070.html
17 3) Fix some more XXX: comments.
19 6) Remove actions that aren't needed anymore:
21 content-type-overwrite should probably stay as it's also
22 used by some of the CGI pages (XXX: name them).
24 crunch-client-header and crunch-server-header should probably
25 go, their only advantage is that their search strings can be
26 controlled through the CGI pages, other than that they only
29 crunch-if-none-match can be replaced with a header filter.
31 prevent-compression has a misleading name and could
32 be replaced with a header filter.
34 7) force-text-mode has a stupid name and should probably
35 be renamed to force-filter-mode.
37 8) handle-as-empty-document and handle-as-image should
38 be merged to something like handle-as{something} to
39 prevent them from being activated at the same time.
41 10) There's a bug in the CGI editor that turns the
42 first section's "Insert new section below" into
43 a "Insert new section above" button.
45 11) CGI templates should use semantically-correct HTML
50 12) Support pipelining for outgoing connections.
52 14) Allow to filter POST parameters.
54 19) enable-forward-fallback. Syntax? Suggested by K.R.
56 21) User Manual delivery doesn't accept multiple slashes. Should it?
58 22) Verify action files properly (Including arguments) and
59 act accordingly (should probably intercept all requests
60 with a "Invalid option foo detected" CGI page).
62 23) Do the same in case of syntax errors in the configuration file,
63 instead of just exiting or ignoring the problem.
65 25) Handle multiple filters with the same name better. Reject them?
67 26) Let show-url-info detect clearly invalid URLs.
69 27) Make errno logging less thread-unsafe.
70 Verify that it's really an improvement.
72 28) Don't take default ports in case of invalid forwarding ports.
74 31) If a string action foo is disabled csp->action->string[ACTION_STRING_FOO]
75 doesn't necessarily contain NULL, but may contain the string of an
76 enabled foo action in an overruled section. Is it a bug? Does it matter?
78 32) In case of forwarding failures with socks port == 9050,
79 show extra info about Tor (the whole FAQ entry?).
81 36) Unload unused action files directly, even if they are
82 disabled without replacement.
84 38) In the final results, explicitly list disabled multi actions
85 with their parameters. Not as trivial as it sounds.
87 40) When running in daemon mode, Privoxy's working directory is '/'
88 which means it may not have permissions to dump core when necessary.
89 Figure out a way to solve this. Introduce a cwd config option?
91 41) Change documentation framework to one that works cross-platform.
92 Evaluate WML and txt2tags.
94 42) Add a DTrace USDT provider. Now that FreeBSD has userland DTrace
95 support there's no longer any reason not to.
97 43) Write a tool to check URL patterns against URLs in the log file.
98 This could be included in Privoxy-Regression-Test.
100 44) Privoxy-Log-Parser: Consider highlighting "Connection" in:
101 23:13:03.506 283b6100 Header: Replaced: 'Connection: Keep-Alive' with 'Connection: close'
103 50) Investigate possible PCRS template speedup when searching
104 macros with strstr() before compiling pcrs commands.
105 Investigated, needs some restructuring but is probably worth it.
107 51) Make user-manual directive more generic to allow serving the FAQ
108 and files from user-specified directories. Consider changing the
109 port for "same origin policy" issues.
111 53) Find a more reliable hoster. Involves finding out what our
112 requirements are and which SF alternatives fulfil them.
113 It would probably also make sense to look into what other
114 projects did when migrating away from SF.
116 2014-05: Work in progress. Hosting wish list at the end
117 of this file. Looks like most of the other projects
118 that left SF had lower standards and moved to hosters
119 that don't come close to sattisfying the requirements.
120 2016-03: The website has been moved away from SF infrastructure
121 and is also available through https:// now.
122 2016-04: Server rent for a year has been sponsored by ChameleonJohn.
123 2016-04: The SF mailing lists have been deprecated, the new ones
124 are available at: https://lists.privoxy.org/
126 Interested donors: 1.
128 54) Move away from CVS to a more modern revision control system.
129 The move to git is work in progress:
130 https://sourceforge.net/p/ijbswa/mailman/message/34994343/
132 58) Move more template strings from the code into the actual templates.
134 59) Import the German template translation.
136 60) Ask the Russian translators for input on how to make their
139 61) Consider (optionally?) skipping the hostname comparison when
140 checking if a connections that goes to a HTTP proxy can be reused.
141 Do all HTTP proxy support that? Is it worth it?
143 63) Reject clearly too large requests earlier?
145 64) Use proper copyright attribution. "Privoxy Developers"
148 65) Polish Website. Probably involves ditching the Docbook
149 mess. There are already several threads in the mailinglist
150 archives about this. See also #41.
152 66) Stop hard-coding the number of action and filter files.
154 67) Clean up source code directory layout. Depends on 54 so
155 we don't lose the revision history.
157 68) Use standard make syntax so we don't depend on GNU make.
159 69) Update autoconf setup (or move away from it).
160 Unfortunately the autoconf files can't be simply updated
161 due to license issues:
162 https://lists.privoxy.org/pipermail/privoxy-devel/2016-April/000008.html
164 70) If the server connection is reset but the headers are
165 received, consider passing the mess to the client instead
166 of showing the connect-failed template. Relates to #2698674.
168 74) Let Privoxy-Regression-Test optionally check that action
169 sections which disable actions actually are preceded by
170 sections that enable said actions.
172 75) Create a tool that creates Privoxy action (and filter?) files
173 out of adblock files. Could be implemented as option for
174 url-pattern-translator.pl.
176 76) Cache DNS responses. Note that this has been requested
177 several times by users, but is not a developer priority.
178 If you care about this, feel free to submit patches.
180 77) Allow to configure the IP address used in outgoing connections.
182 78) Allow to optionally use pcre's DFA algorithm.
184 79) Evaluate pcre alternatives.
186 80) Change FEATURE_EXTENDED_HOST_PATTERNS to support both
187 extended and vanilla host patterns at the same time.
189 Note that the requirement is to allow the user to decide
190 if the domain pattern should be interpreted as regex or
191 traditional host pattern and if it's not obvious that the
192 user made any decision, default to the latter.
194 Possible solutions would be:
196 1. An always-use-regex-domain-patterns config option
197 2. An enable-regex-domain-patterns-for-this-action-file option
198 3. An enable-regex-domain-patterns-for-this-action-file-until-the-user-says-otherwise option
199 4. A treat-the-domain-pattern-in-this-line-as-regex(-or-not) option
200 5. Combinations of the options above
202 With 2+4, 3+4 or 2+3+4 being the preferences until
205 82) Detect if the system time goes back in time let the user
206 know if it caused any connections to get closed.
208 85) Once #51 is done, write a script that populates a directory with
209 various common third-party icons (stumbleupon.png, facebook.png ...)
210 and redirect requests for them to Privoxy.
212 86) Add a server-body-tagger action. This is trivial as as all the
213 functionality required to do it already exists.
215 87) Add a client-body-tagger action. This is less trivial as we currently
216 don't buffer client bodies. After 14) is implemented it would be
219 88) Investigate if there's a Perl module that Privoxy-Regression-Test
220 could optionally use to keep connections alive, preferably while
221 requiring less forks at the same time.
223 89) When multiple block actions apply, consider showing all the block
224 reasons on the blocked page that haven't been overruled, not just
227 91) Add an optional limit for internal redirects. It would probably
228 be reasonable to default to a limit of one and showing an error
229 message if the request for the redirect URL would be redirected
232 92) The statistics currently aren't calculated correctly by Privoxy
233 as each thread is only counted as one request which is no longer
234 correct. This should be fixed, or the statistic code removed.
235 Privoxy-Log-Parser's provides more detailed statistics, anyway.
237 93) Add a config directive to let Privoxy explicitly request either
238 IPv4 (or IPv6) addresses, even if the system supports both.
239 Could be useful as a workaround for misconfigured setups where the
240 libc returns IPv6 addresses even if there's no IPv6 connectivity.
242 94) Add a config directive to let Privoxy prefer either IPv4 (or IPv6)
243 addresses, instead of trusting the libc to return them in an order
244 that makes sense. Like #93, this could be useful as a workaround
245 for misconfigured setups.
247 96) Filters should be easier to look up. Currently get_filter() has to
248 go through all filters and skip the filter types the caller isn't
251 98) When showing action section on the CGI pages, properly escape
252 line breaks so they can be copy&pasted into action files without
255 99) Figure out a mechanism through which a user can easily enable
256 site-specific action sections that are too aggressive to be
257 enabled by default. This could be similar to the presettings
258 in default.action, but could also be just another action file
259 that isn't used by default.
261 100) Create a cross-platform Privoxy control program and retire
262 the win32 GUI. Integrate support for Privoxy-Regression-Test,
263 Privoxy-Log-Parser, Privoxy-Filter-Test, uagen and similar tools.
264 Interested donors: 1.
266 102) Add an include directive to split the config file into several parts.
268 103) Potential performance improvement for large action files:
269 when figuring out which actions apply, check the action bit mask
270 before pattern matching and skip section that wouldn't modify the
271 actions already set. To increase the impact the sections would have
272 to be applied in reverse.
274 104) The code to modify global_toggle_state should be factored out into
275 a separate function. Currently we mess with it in three different
276 files, but only in w32log.c the tray icon is explicitly set.
277 The logging is inconsistent as well. For details see #3525694.
279 106) actionlist.h should be embedded in a way that causes less text
282 107) Support more pcrs variables, for example $destination-ip-address
283 and $source-ip-address.
285 108) Allow to use a somewhat random string instead of PRIVOXY-FORCE.
287 109) Let log_error() support the format specifier %S which should
288 work like %s but escape new lines like %N. This would be useful
289 to log the result of header filters which may inject new lines.
291 110) Add a global-buffer-limit directive that roughly limits how
292 much malloc'ed memory Privoxy will use and can potentially
293 be smaller than (buffer-limit * max-client-connections).
295 111) Reject requests if hosts and ports in request line and Host
296 header don't match (before filters have been applied).
298 112) If a header filter is used to inject another header by inserting
299 a \r\n (undocumented feature), detect it and split the headers so
300 following header actions do not treat them as a single string.
301 Alternatively add another header injection mechanism.
303 113) Log statistics upon receiving a certain signal (SIGINFO or SIGUSR1).
305 114) Properly deal with status code 100. The current "Continue hack"
306 can cause problems for gpg when uploading keys through Privoxy.
308 115) Add ICAP (RFC 3507) support. FR #3615158.
310 116) Due to the use of sscanf(), Privoxy currently will fail to properly
311 parse chunks whose size can't be represented with 32 bit. This is
312 unlikely to cause problems in the real world, but should eventually
313 be fixed anyway. See also:
314 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=959100
316 118) There should be "escaped" dynamic variables that are guaranteed
317 not to break filters.
319 119) Evaluate using pcre's jit mode.
321 120) Add an option to limit pcre's recursion limit below the default.
322 On some platforms the recursion limit doesn't prevent pcre from
323 running out of stack space, causing the kernel to kill Privoxy
326 121) Add HTTP/2 support. As a first step, incoming HTTP/1.x requests
327 should be translated to outgoing HTTP/2 requests where possible
328 (and if desired by the user).
329 Interested donors: 1.
331 122) Allow customized log messages.
333 124) Add support for the "lightweight OS capability and sandbox framework"
334 Capsicum. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/capsicum/
335 Interested donors: 1.
337 125) Allow clients to HTTPS-encrypt the proxy connection.
338 Interested donors: 1.
340 126) Run the Co-Advisor HTTP compliance tests, evaluate the results,
341 fix the compliance issues that aren't by design and document
343 Note that Privoxy developers qualify for free account upgrades:
344 http://coad.measurement-factory.com/details.html#pricing
346 127) Add "real" CGI support (serve program output instead of forwarding
347 the request). The work is mostly done due to +external-filter{}.
349 128) Add a config directive to control the stack limit.
351 129) Completely implement RFC 7230 4.1 (Chunked Transfer Coding).
352 Currently Privoxy doesn't properly deal with trailers which
353 are rarely used in the real world but should be supported anyway.
355 130) Move header_tagger() out of the parser structs and let it execute
356 taggers one-by-one against all headers so the header order has less
357 influence on the tagging result. As a bonus, dynamic taggers would
358 have to be compiled less often.
360 131) The handle-as-empty-doc-returns-ok directive should be replaced with
361 an action so the behaviour can be enabled on a per-request basis.
362 Interested donors: 1.
364 133) Consider allowing bitcoin donations.
365 Interested donors: 2.
367 134) Track the total number of bytes written to and received from a socket.
369 135) Add OpenBSM audit support.
371 136) Make builds reproducible.
373 137) Add a (preferably vector-based) logo.
375 138) Bring back the scripts to provide actions file feedback.
377 Once upon a time (~2003) there were scripts on the webserver
378 to make reporting action file feedback more convenient for the
379 user and the actual reports more useful for the developers.
380 They have been unusable for years and have thus been disabled,
381 but making the reporting mechanism available again would be a
384 140) Toggling Privoxy off currently also disables stuff that
385 probably shouldn't be affected (such as actions like
386 forward-override). Investigate and fix or document.
388 141) Port Privoxy to CloudABI, which, despite the name, is actually
389 rather neat. https://github.com/NuxiNL/cloudlibc
391 142) Remove or update the "internal" pcre version.
393 143) Add support for OpenBSD's pledge feature once it's stablelized.
394 This should be a lot less work then #124.
396 146) Allow to save the internal client tag state to disk and
397 load it after restarts.
399 147) Improve "Building from Source" section in the user manual.
400 A common problem seems to be that it's not obvious to non-technical
401 users how the listed dependencies can be installed on the commonly
402 used platforms. Adding a couple of examples should also be useful for
403 technical users (like Privoxy developers) who want to install or test
404 Privoxy on platforms they are not familiar with.
406 148) Add a config directive to change the CGI_SITE_2_HOST
407 (default: config.privoxy.org).
409 If Privoxy is used as reverse proxy or intercepting proxy without
410 getting intercepted requests, error pages created from default templates
411 currently can result in client requests to config.privoxy.org on the
412 Internet which may not be desirable.
414 150) Add blacklistd support.
416 151) Let the dok-tidy target work cross-platform without introducing
417 a ton of white-space changes that hide the content changes.
419 152) Fix CSS references in the website documentation.
420 For many pages p_doc.css is specified twice using different paths.
421 Usually at least one works, but not all of them do and the
422 duplicated requests are pointless even if they don't end up with
425 153) Catch SIGINT and use it to close the listen socket, serve
426 remaining connections and shut down. This would allow higher
427 uptime and make testing more convenient.
429 154) Underline links in docs and cgi pages. More precisely,
430 don't mess with the browser defaults for link underlining.
432 155) The sig_handler() shouldn't call log_error().
433 While it isn't known to cause actual problems in normal operation,
434 it's technically incorrect and causes crashes when running in
437 156) Reject socks requests with an explicit error message similar
438 to the one used for ftp. Motivation:
439 https://lists.privoxy.org/pipermail/privoxy-users/2017-March/000195.html
441 158) Use a single thread to wait for new requests on reused client connections.
442 Currently the thread that handles the first request on a connection
443 stays responsible for the client connect until it gets closed.
444 In case of lots of idle connections lots of waiting threads are used.
445 While it's conceivable that this ineffiency is irrelevant from a
446 performance point of view, using a single thread should reduce Privoxy's
447 memory footprint a bit which may be noticeable in case of multi-user setups
448 with hundreds of idle connections.
449 ##########################################################################
451 Hosting wish list (relevant for #53)
456 - Mailinglists (Mailman with public archives preferred)
457 - Webspace (on a Unix-like OS that works with the webserver targets
459 - Source code repositories (currently CVS, but migrating away
460 from it is TODO #54 anyway and shouldn't be too much trouble)
461 - Commit mails (preferably with unified diffs)
463 (Unsorted) details to look at when evaluating hosters:
465 1. Preferably no third-party ads and trackers.
466 External images, CSS and JavaScript may count as trackers
467 but texts like "supported by company XYZ" may be acceptable.
469 2. JavaScript should be optional or not used at all.
471 3. Services we don't need shouldn't be enabled anyway.
472 (We currently don't use Web forums, wikis, surveys etc.)
474 4. It would be preferable if the hoster didn't have a bad track
475 record as far as user experience, security and privacy are
476 concerned and if the terms of service are "reasonable" and
477 haven't changed too often in the past. Updates in the past
478 should have been improvements and not regressions.
480 5. It would be preferable if most of the server administration
481 is done by a trusted third-party (or at least not a lot of work
484 6. The server(s) should be located in a country with laws we can
485 understand and follow (or at least not unintentionally violate).
487 7. A server location in a country with some kind of due process
488 and strong data protection laws (at least on paper) would be
491 8. Given that Privoxy is a free software project it would be
492 preferable if the hoster would use free software where possible.
494 9. Migrating away from the hoster in the future without losing
495 any important data should be possible without writing web