135061 - Cache should be sharable by different apps that embed Gecko

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Networking: Cache, enhancement)

Description

[Braden]

Different apps that embed Gecko should be able to share cache data.

(Spawned from bug 134959.)

Comment 1

[[e-mail]]

As much as this sounds reasonable on first sight I wonder what it really means?
Should the user be able to specify the same cache directory for both apps?
Or should there be a shared default location for all apps from the start?
And then, what if both apps run at the same time? At the moment we dont even
have decent profile sharing protection for two instances of mozilla running
at the same time. And what if the two apps have different prefs for cache size?
Just wondering ...

Comment 2

[Braden]

Apps would share cache preferences.

Comment 3

[Darin Fisher]

-> me

Comment 4

[Braden]

*** Bug 250856 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Jean-Marc Desperrier]

Removing the dependency on bug 217538 that made no sense (217538 is a crypto bug).

Comment 6

[Ben O'Brien]

can somebody tell me why this 11 year old bug is still new?

Comment 7

[Brian Smith (:briansmith, :bsmith, use NEEDINFO?)]

It's pretty clear we're never going to implement this.

Comment 8

[Ben O'Brien]

Why not?

Comment 9

[Brian Smith (:briansmith, :bsmith, use NEEDINFO?)]

(In reply to Ben O'Brien from comment #8)
> Why not?

The high priorities for the cache are that it has to be as fast as possible and as crash-resistant as possible. Part of making that possible will undoubtedly be an underlying assumption that no other applications are modifying the cache or reading from it. Further, Gecko doesn't allow apps to share any part of the profile, and the cache relies on Gecko's profile locking stuff. Also, we need the flexibility to change the file format of the cache at any time without notice, and the flexibility to change the APIs for accessing the cache at any time without notice. No stable API and no stable file format means that any apps trying to share the cache would break regularly (potentially every six weeks).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Gecko, and Gecko development processes, are  being optimized for Firefox and FirefoxOS, admittedly at the expense of any non-Firefox(OS) apps. So, the priorities underlying this bug are completely opposite of the project-wide priorities for Gecko.

Comment 10

[Ben O'Brien]

What about having an option to have individual computer profiles. If they are then synced over Firefox sync it will be like each of them are a different computer. After all each of them are different computers. The option would be off by default and if you look up the problem you would find this instead of nothing.

Also this would only effect a small percent of the users. However they are generally the power users who have been instrumental in spreading firefox. I have converted several businesses to using firefox and from there many of the employees. The people who I convince to use firefox will never face this problem. Only computer techies and such face this problem.