Currently, pages that transclude special pages aren't cached at all. I see the benefit to this (that special pages should always be "live"), but at the same time, we can probably find a smarter way of handling caching that doesn't need to completely disable it. This will likely become a bigger issue as more and more special pages are given the ability to be transcluded.
Version: 1.23.0
Severity: enhancement
(In reply to comment #0)
Currently, pages that transclude special pages aren't cached at all. I see
the
benefit to this (that special pages should always be "live"), but at the same
time, we can probably find a smarter way of handling caching that doesn't
need
to completely disable it. This will likely become a bigger issue as more and
more special pages are given the ability to be transcluded.
I've been thinking it would be good to have a method of the SpecialPage class, getTranscludeCacheTime(), which by default returns 0 (Or perhaps it should return 1 hour or something small. On a busy page, even a very small cache time would probably make a huge performance difference), which people could override as appropriate.
I would also suggest that the RequestContext passed to the special page for any special page which doesn't disable cache, doesn't include the current user/etc, but instead includes an anonoymous user, and the page rendering language for the language. That way we won't have user specific things poisioning the cahe (For example, {{special:Recentchanges}} will currently show block links if you have block rights. This would be bad if the page was uncached)
Change 140945 had a related patch set uploaded by Jackmcbarn:
Make transcluded special pages not disable cache in miser mode.
Change 140945 merged by jenkins-bot:
Make transcluded special pages not disable cache in miser mode.