Paste Roadmap
+++++++++++++

:revision: $Rev$
:date: $LastChangedDate$

This is a document describing Paste's future and some of the things
planned.  This may change as events continue.  Discussion is welcome;
please direct discussion to paste-users@pythonpaste.org

Bold items are particularly important.  The sections are in no
particular order.

.. contents::

To-Do
=====

paster
------

* **Package installation and upgrading.** (partially done)

  * Package installation should allow for Paste-specific hooks.

* Allow applications to easily add their own commands, e.g.,
  ``add-user``.  

* Better PID management when in daemon mode (don't clobber a PID file
  of a running process)

* Add options to manage the daemon process, like force
  reloading/restarting (HUP?) and stopping; make init.d scripts as
  minimal as possible.

paste.docsupport
----------------

* Add indexing for the various objects (middleware, configuration
  options, WSGI environment keys).

* Extract some packages into separate files.  (e.g., ``paste.webkit``,
  ``paste.wareweb`` -- but *not* ``paste.exceptions``)

paste.tests.doctest_webapp
--------------------------

* Maybe move out of ``tests`` package.

* Make it fail hard on certain errors (e.g., when ``paster`` fails)

paste.tests.fixture
-------------------

* Maybe move out of ``tests`` package.

* Get rid of fake_request (convert current tests to TestApp).

* Fill out or remove other mock objects.  (Maybe make a package for
  other pieces?)

* ``setup_module`` really only applies to application acceptance
  testing, but can be enabled unwittingly when doing ``import *`` --
  figure something out there.

paste.pycgiwrapper
------------------

* Document, test, or throw away.

* Allow for non-Python CGI scripts (no clever tricks, just run it in a
  subprocess).

paste.pyconfig
--------------

* Put in notion of "profiles," which involve different sets of
  configuration files.

* Add ini-file parser/loader (probably taking from the old
  ``paste.conf`` module), so some parts of configuration can be
  explicitly handed off to a simpler configuration file.

* Clean up ``use_package`` and move to another module.

paste.reloader
--------------

* Make it optionally use FAM or iNotify, instead of polling files.

* Make sure it uses HUP, etc.

paste.wdg_validate
------------------

* Allow other validators to be plugged in.

* Validate CSS (embedded CSS with report in parent page?).

Blue-sky
~~~~~~~~

* Validate Javascript...?  An anal Javascript parser would be really
  cool.

paste.exceptions
----------------

* Display local variables in exception reports, like ``cgitb``.
  Except values should be inlined into the source line itself in HTML
  ``title`` attributes, and the ``class`` should represent the rough
  type (e.g., module, None, string, number, function).

* Keep extra data from being doubly displayed.

* Add object and protocol so HTML can be included in extra data.

* Include "serial number" in non-exception output.

* Add hooks to suppress reporters.  E.g., if a "developer" is logged
  in, the error report need not mailed.  Maybe just based on IP
  address (a rough feature is all that is needed).

Blue-sky
~~~~~~~~

* Allow evaluation in local stacks, interactively, keeping the
  traceback in a session or similar location.

paste.urlparser
---------------

* Static-file-only serving, for serving directories full of Javascript
  and whatnot without security concern.

* Middleware for various compositions of applications, like nesting
  several applications under the same URL space, using the first one
  that doesn't return 404.

paste.session
-------------

* **Use flup session middleware**

* Add DB-API-based session storage.

* Add URI->DB-API connection parser (maybe strip from SQLObject).

paste.login
-----------

* Really document it, and test it.

* Provide some useful backends (htpasswd, database/DB-API,
  SQLObject).

paste.gzipper
-------------

* Probably should just be removed.

Things to Add
=============

No module yet, so these are listed generally.

* Really good static-file WSGI application, that knows about
  If-Modified-Since, ETag, etc.  Should have caching of gzipped
  versions and cache some metadata (like etags themselves).

* Authorization middleware.

* Something to manage collections of static files, like a Javascript
  library.

* Something to copy static files to a known location, based on
  configuration.  E.g., copy static files into a location served by
  Apache.  

* Bring some Javascript library in, mostly for use in examples, but
  also as a kind of suggestion.

* Upload-progress-tracking WSGI application.

* Something like Webware's TaskKit, but more abstract.  And
  multiprocess-friendly.

Done
====

25 May 2005: 
    **``--daemon`` option for running as background process**

29 May 2005:
    * Template files should have optional ``.ext_tmpl`` extension, where
      ``_tmpl`` gets stripped.  This way the currently-invalid ``.py``
      template files wouldn't be recognized as Pythohn files.

30 May 2005:

    * **Deployment of multiple applications using configuration files**

      * An application could be mapped to a particular URL, given a
        configuration file that describes the application.