270924 - Need command line option to remove XUL.mfasl file on startup

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, enhancement)

Description

[Kurt M. Brown]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041111 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041111 Firefox/1.0

When developing a XUL application, it is required to remove the "Fast Load" (on
Unix "XUL.mfasl") file in order to register changes to the source, accessed
through "file://" URLs in the chrome.rdf.

I remove XUL.mfasl with a script, but a command line option would be superior,
since then I would not have to account for the "profile" location.

The option could be like this:

  $ mozilla --purge-fast-load


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Felix Miata]

user_pref("nglayout.debug.disable_xul_cache", true); won't do it for you?

Comment 2

[Kurt M. Brown]

The preference, "nglayout.debug.disable_xul_cache", does indeed help. I now
remember setting it in the past. In mozilla 1.7.3 and firefox 1.0, the
preference is not initially included and so it must be added. Also, when I
googled "XUL.mfasl", I did not find any mention of this preference.

If a new preference, "nglayout.debug.remove_xul_cache", is "true", or (better) a
new preference, "nglayout.debug.memory_xul_cache", is "true" then a caching
benefit can occur while the browser instance is running and the
document.location is changed; i.e., the cache is removed at startup, but is then
built (on disk and in memory)  while the browser instance is up and then used
when a document.location value is repeated or a dialog page is opened. The new
preference only makes sense for long running XUL applications the have multiple
document.location changes or dialog pages.

Comment 3

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Let's fix the fastload problems, instead of wallpapering over them.