266343 - RFE: Profile Manager: Please provide finer-grained selection of clean-up when "deleting" a profile.

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Core Graveyard :: Profile: Migration, enhancement)

Description

[David A. Cobb]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041024 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041024 Firefox/1.0

NOTE: 'Profile Manager' should be on the list of components ! [I've hit my
nightly bug limit]

If I select "Delete Profile" the PM gives me a choice of deleting or not
deleting the files in the profile directory.  THANK SOMEBODY!!
However, there are some things that should probably be deleted anyway and others
that should NOT.  For example, the xul cache(?) XUL.mfl is always disposable -
and a source of trouble if not deleted; my gigabyte of saved mail folders is
definitely NOT disposable.

The point is that the Mozilla team knows which is which.  The panel that now
offers a Yes/No choice of destroying the profile content could offer (e.g.)
Deleting a profile: note blah blah everything in the folder foldername/whatever.
 This cannot be undone.  Please choose how much to delete:
( ) Delete everything
( ) Delete extensions
( ) Delete plug-in registry
( ) Delete only files that are automatically regenerated.

Options to convert files where an incompatable change is in this new version; it
would be quite adequate to do this only for one change cycle.  If you/we change,
for example, the format of the saved-password database for 1.01+, and we did it
before at 0.6 -> 0.7, the product is not too burdened to know how to convert
1.00 to 1.01+; and anyone who hasn't caught up to 1.00 has too many other
problems to worry about this one.  Or he can first install a version 0.99 that
knows how to convert the 0.6 db to 0.7 thru 1.0.  That's really easy when nearly
every historical version is still available for download.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Thunderbird
2. At the final panel, the installer offers to launch the product.  Select NO.
3. Launch the Profile Manager for the product.
4. Select to delete the current (possibly obsolete) profile.

Actual Results:  
I'm looking at an existing profile, with no information about whether it is a
good fit for the new version.  
If I choose to delete the profile I have a yes/no choice of deleting the files
in the profile.
In practice I always say no, then I do not launch the product from PM; instead I
exit and spend a while prowling about my profile directory guessing what things
are probably safe to delete.  Sometimes the results are unhappy.

Expected Results:  
1. Advise me of profile contents that are not compatable with the new product vsn;
2. Allow to delete files that are easy or automatic to recreate - while keeping
others;
3. Advise what some of the files are: I still don't quite know how to find the
security information, but I know I don't want to delete it!
4. Allow to convert incompatable profile files [nice to have!]

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.