888695 - "Use custom settings for history" 'disappears' my disk cache

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[fbcynfrr]

Attachment: Clipboard.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130618035212

Steps to reproduce:

I did a clean install of Firefox 22.0 on Vista.
I went into options, and set "Use custom settings for history."
I went into about:config, created the browser.cache.disk.parent_directory key, and gave it the value of a directory I had created. 



Actual results:

This had no effect whatsoever. The new directory was absolutely empty (no hidden folders either). When I looked at about:cache, no disk cache was listed.

When I set the option back to "Remember history" and restarted Firefox, *the disk cache worked as expected*. I set the option to custom and restarted, once again: no disk cache.

This all happened both on an admin account and on a regular user account, both with and without add-ons.


Expected results:

The disk cache should be active.

Comment 1

[fbcynfrr]

IMPORTANT:

Almost by coincidence, I found the following information from cor-el: "In case you are using 'Clear history when Firefox closes': do not clear Cache because Firefox will disable the disk cache in such a case". 

There are some use-cases for which this is obviously appropriate behavior, but for this to be the default (and perhaps unchangeable) policy is baffling to me. Not to mention that it is unintuitive and unclear enough that I wasted hours trying to figure out what was happening.

Anyhow, whether this is a known issue or, apparently, a deliberate policy, this bug report can be considered "resolved".