190966 - Support windows disk cleanup api

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[timeless]

Mozilla has a couple of things which take up a lot of space which the user could
dispose of if necessary, but the user might not know about them and the user
should be able to reach them through the OS interface (Disk Cleanup).

documentation for supporting this interface is currently available at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_int/shell_int_extending/disk_cleanup.asp

The main thing to cleanup is Networking: Cache, however it might also be worth
allowing the user to [mail] Empty Trash and [mail] Compress Folders.

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 172887 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[James May [:fowl2]]

Attachment: Dumb Firefox disk cleanup handler registry entry

I was playing around with this a few days ago and came up with this little registry entry as a proof of concept.

Caveats:

 * If you use it while Firefox is running, most of the cache gets cleared, but not the index, which leads to some odd "file not found" errors.
 * It clears all "profiles" for the current Windows user, as those are named randomly.
 * It currently clears the entire folder - so the safebrowsing db and update log goes as well - but it's very easy to just do the cache or just the safe browsing db, etc.
 * the path to the Firefox executable (to display the icon), strings, etc are hardcoded.

To fix those things:

 * The cache could be taught to be smarter about missing files, or a COM object could be written that understood how to ask a running instance to clear its cache.
 * The installer would have no trouble creating registry entries that point to the right place.

There are also the policy decisions about whether these items should be deleted by default, only in low disk space, etc. 

Anyway that's what I learnt from an hour of MSDN and getting "disk cleanup" to the top of my start menu. ;)

Comment 3

[James May [:fowl2]]

related to bug 1296592