66463 - registry.dat file should contain version info

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: BackEnd, defect)

Description

[Henrik Gemal]

The registry file should contain some info about the version number of the 
software that created the profiles that the file holds.

See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44071

Ben: can you explain more...

Comment 1

[Conrad Carlen (not reading bugmail)]

No, As I've said before there is no profile format other than the registry file
itself. Since that uses nsIRegistry with named keys, we can always have forward
and backward compatibility of that file and I'll make damn sure of it. In terms
of the other files that are stored in a profile dir, they have no relation
whatsoever to each other and they are maintained by many different components.
How can you stamp a global "version" on the many files that live in a profile
dir (which is what sticking it in the registry would assume)? Some may change
from version to version and some may not. It's up to the individual components
which maintain these files to do versioning within their own specific files -
not the registry.

Comment 2

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

ccarlen, I know what you mean. But, you can then say as well that Communicator
(SeaMonkey) has no version, because it contains many components, with largely
varying levels of changes.

Having the version of the app which created / last used that profile *might*
help us with later compatibility problems.

Let's say a Mozilla user would try to open a Netscape Navigator 2 profile. What
would happen? Let's say we know that it doesn't work (maybe fails horribly), and
we don't care to provide an import function, it would be nice if we could just
look in the registry, check the version, and refuse the import/loading of the
profile.
What if a user tries to load a Mozilla 1.0 profile with Mozilla 3.0 (to be
released in 2010 - disclaimer: this is no announcement ;-P )? OK, maybe we are
so good that it will just work (I doubt it), maybe we are so nice that we
provide an import function (maybe we aren't), but what if not?

Maybe I'm just making this up, but maybe it will be very helpful in the future.

Comment 3

[Conrad Carlen (not reading bugmail)]

Again, It's up to the individual components
which maintain these files to do versioning within their own specific files -
not the registry. With that, marking wont fix.

Comment 4

[Grace Bush]

vfy