Tasks

wzdftpd needs your help! For general information on how you can start contributing to the wzdftpd project, click here. You don't need to be a programmer to help out. You can test wzdftpd and try to find bugs, write new documentation for wzdftpd and help answer questions on the forum or on IRC.

This page lists some specific tasks and projects which have been suggested for future development work from anyone wanting to help out. Feel free to add tasks/ideas to this page as required.

Don't forget to check the active trac tickets for a complete list of tasks, bugs and features which require development work.

Testing/building wzdftpd

Download the source code to wzdftpd and build it on your platform. We need as much feedback as possible on how wzdftpd performs on all the different platforms and software configurations available.

Try wzdftpd using different library versions of OpenSSL, Perl, MySQL, etc.

And test out all the features of wzdftpd to make sure they work as intended.

If you find some bugs or fixes that need to be made, you can report them by creating a new ticket. This sort of feedback is very important to the wzdftpd project. There are never enough people who can test wzdftpd, and almost anyone can do it with little technical expertise and programming knowledge. It is an ideal place to start from if you're new to wzdftpd development.

Documentation/website

Site command reference

The site command reference is currently incomplete and is in need of improvement. There is an [wiki/index.php/Commands old reference] available on the old Mediawiki which you can work from. Please see ticket #81 for more information on this task.

Configuration file reference

The configuration file reference needs to be rewritten on the new trac wiki. There is an old Mediawiki version available which you can use as a guide.

Build instructions for various platforms

The instructions for building wzdftpd on various platforms and Linux distributions need to be written and corrected where errors exist.

Installation instructions

The installation instructions for installing wzdftpd on various platforms and Linux distributions also need to be written and corrected where errors exist.

Programming

Improved socket handling

A highly requested change for wzdftpd is the rewrite of the socket code (especially for data connections). The code needs to be able to allow people to use wzdftpd with only one data port open. Random port selection also needs improvement.

Correct UTF8 implementation

See ticket #82.

New python module

The addition of a new python module allowing the use of python scripts from wzdftpd.

Perl SWIG bindings

See Perl Extension Building with SWIG.

Complete TODO/fixme's in the code

There are a lot of TODO/fixme code comments throughout the wzdftpd code. Help address these pieces of code that need improvement or rewriting. There are all sorts of tasks ranging from small & easy to large & complicated.

Installers/packaging

Redhat RPM script

The current RPM script for building RPMs of wzdftpd is outdated and needs replacing.

Gentoo ebuild script

A Gentoo Linux ebuild script has been developed but needs testing and fine tuning. See ticket #137 for more details, or Gentoo Bug 186831 for upstream information on getting wzdftpd added to the Gentoo Portage tree.

Windows installer

Testing needs to be done on 64bit Windows, in particular Windows Vista. There are improvements which could be made to the current installer such as inclusion of OpenSSL libraries or an update-check feature in the installer.

Scripts

Other FTP servers such as glftpd and ioFTPD have a wide variety of scripts available for use. It would be beneficial to either port some of these scripts over to wzdftpd, or develop new ones.

Configuration/management GUI

Many people have asked for some form of GUI for configuring and managing wzdftpd. Either a traditional GUI based on GTK (or similar) - or a PHP/web based front end would be a good choice. A few people in the forums have stated that they were working on a GUI for wzdftpd, but these projects/ideas have never come to life.

Tests

The current set of test scripts for wzdftpd are outdated and not currently maintained. In order to allow for benchmarking and automated testing of wzdftpd builds, we need some form of test tools customized for use with wzdftpd. This could be anything from shell scripts using lftp to simulate actual FTP server usage to customized tools written in C for stress testing wzdftpd.