158594 - Move app specific pref files to their own dirs

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 62755

(Core :: Preferences: Backend, defect)

Description

[Stephen Walker]

editor.js and mailnews.js should be moved from libpref/src/init to new places in
editor/ and mailnews/. If I disable the building of mailnews, mailnews.js is
still copied to bin/defaults/pref. Since mailnews isn't being built, mailnews.js
is sitting unused and hurting startup time because all the files in
bin/defaults/pref are parsed on startup. editor.js should also be moved since
someday, although highly unlikely, one could disable the building of editor.

Comment 1

[Brian Nesse (gone)]

I don't know if moving the prefs files is the right answer. We could do that, of
course, but then we have preferences scattered around the tree, whereas right
now they are contained in one location.

I think it would be better to clean up the build system (and I expect the
packaging system as well) to have the appropriate modules (mailnews, editor,
etc.) copy their files to dist when they are built, rather than depending on the
prefs module to copy them as part of its build process.

Comment 2

[Alec Flett]

I actually agree with Stephen here - I think each module should be responsible
for providing their own prefs files... we do this for some modules (i.e.
inspector.js) but not others (mailnews.js) - but to do this I think we should
get someone with access to the CVS tree to copy the actual file in the
repository so we have history on the files..

Comment 3

[Brian Nesse (gone)]

So then bugs should be filed on each component that needs to move their files
out of the preferences module? Or should I go randomly slamming prefs files
around in other peoples modules? :)

Comment 4

[Alec Flett]

I think of you "randomly slamming" as "centralizing the work" :) 
No sense in making 5 people make 5 requests to leaf to move CVS files, ask for
approval 5 times to make the checkin, getting 5 different reviews and 5 super
reviews etc... :)

Comment 5

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Note also the bugs about combining pref files to create fewer to open at load time.

would you also split "navigator" prefs out of all.js and move them into xpfe?
Many of the prefs in all.js make no sense in an embedding context.

Comment 6

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

something to keep in mind is that currently, for migration reasons, we need
mailnews.js to be there when migrating from 4.x

so if we moved mailnews.js to under mailnews, we'd still want a browser only
build to have the default mail prefs.   

see http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=168515 and
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66877 for some history about this.

but as long as we don't break 4.x migration, I don't care what we do.

my guess is this is not a high priority item, since it's been on hold since 7/23.

Comment 7

[Stephen Walker]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 62755 ***