> No, don't solicit spam for the bug that wants to remove the options
It's not spam to discuss the merits of implementing a feature request.
> instead, go file a bug saying that Firefox should check the user's quota in addition to statfs. Easily added, and then Firefox becomes that much more automatic.
Not possible - the quota information is not made available in any standard way, but rather by a non-standard dot file in the user's home directory. I know the quota information should be exported by rquotad but things aren't always that neat in the real world.
Even if it were possible users may still prefer not to sacrifice any of their quota-limited home directory to Firefox cache. Who's Mozilla to presume they know what users want?
> It's not spam to discuss the merits of implementing a feature request.
First of all, note that the tracking bug you linked to doesn't even track or discuss any bug about removing the cache options, making it pointless to bring up there.
It wouldn't be spam for you file a bug requesting a fix for quota handling. It also wouldn't be spam for you to post a note to the bug about removing the cache options to point at the quota bug, and to make sure it'll stick around as an about:config option. However, canvassing for other people to go post to a bugzilla tracking bug just leads to noise like the current pile of comments in bug 851698; the vast majority of the comments in that bug, especially the ones by users labeled "(New to Bugzilla)", do indeed constitute spam, and those same comments show up in just about every bug trying to clean up the UI.
> Not possible - the quota information is not made available in any standard way, but rather by a non-standard dot file in the user's home directory. I know the quota information should be exported by rquotad but things aren't always that neat in the real world.
So, we've started from "bug only seen by people running Firefox over NFS", already a very small fraction of users, and then shrunk the audience further to people who don't even use the standard quota mechanisms. An option to serve that vanishingly small fraction of users seems like precisely the domain of about:config.
> Even if it were possible users may still prefer not to sacrifice any of their quota-limited home directory to Firefox cache.
And those users can go tweak the setting in about:config, or you could tweak it for them by changing the system-wide default. That doesn't make it appropriate to put in the main configuration UI; not enough people use it, and its very existence in the UI hurts more people than it helps.
> Who's Mozilla to presume they know what users want?
Makers of a browser used by hundreds of millions of users, with extensive data from actual user testing, tons of statistical data telling them which settings and UI options people actually touch, and most importantly an understanding that just because an option has users doesn't mean it should continue to exist, and that the noisiest people on Bugzilla frequently don't represent a significant fraction of users.
about:config exists to satisfy use cases like yours. Tone down the rhetoric and understand that when your software has hundreds of millions of users, every single change represents a tradeoff between who it might help and who it might hurt. This one seems far easier than most.
They're not the same, really. The advanced preferences tab is an easily-accessible pane in the preferences GUI, right next to things like setting-the-homepage, syncing-your-bookmarks, and other features that are broadly useful. about:config is a page that almost no one knows about, except people who really know what they're doing.
Edit: and the about:config page shows a giant warning that "This might void your warranty" before allowing you to proceed. It's pretty different from a generic "Advanced" tab in a preferences window.
> Who's Mozilla to presume they know what users want?
The developer and designers of the product.
They might not always be right, but they need to be able to make decisions for users in order to move forward. Apps need a champion to lead them and guide them, and sometimes even to upset some users to improve the product for other users.
It's not spam to discuss the merits of implementing a feature request.
> instead, go file a bug saying that Firefox should check the user's quota in addition to statfs. Easily added, and then Firefox becomes that much more automatic.
Not possible - the quota information is not made available in any standard way, but rather by a non-standard dot file in the user's home directory. I know the quota information should be exported by rquotad but things aren't always that neat in the real world.
Even if it were possible users may still prefer not to sacrifice any of their quota-limited home directory to Firefox cache. Who's Mozilla to presume they know what users want?