Work with page cache, not instead of it

I'll likely implement this in the 6.x branch.

Need to see if this module can help out.
http://drupal.org/project/cacheexclude

Looked at the above module and all it does is set $GLOBALS['conf']['cache'] = FALSE; for pages it doesn't want cached, which corresponds to variable_set('cache', CACHE_DISABLED).

This is inside boost_admin_settings_submit()

  // Forcibly disable Drupal's built-in SQL caching to prevent any conflicts of interest:
  variable_set('cache', CACHE_DISABLED);

Drupal's cache gets set via drupal_page_footer() => page_set_cache(). boost_exit() and _boost_ob_handler() are to late in terms of doing $GLOBALS['conf']['cache'] = TRUE;. Need to see if I can move the drupal_get_headers() out of _boost_ob_handler() and into an earlier stage; via boost_preprocess_page(). Main goal is to enable drupal's cache when boost won't cache that page. Need to see if CACHE_AGGRESSIVE is compatible with boost; it gets evaluated in _drupal_bootstrap(), controls the calling of bootstrap_invoke_all('boot') (hook_boot()), bootstrap_invoke_all('exit') (hook_exit()). Boost has a hoox_exit() call but this only gets bypassed if the cache is set for that page & CACHE_AGGRESSIVE. So my guess is boost is compatible with CACHE_AGGRESSIVE.

Long story short:
Inside new function boost_preprocess_page() IF boost is going to cache page THEN set $GLOBALS['conf']['cache'] = FALSE. Re-enable normal cache settings on performance page.

man this is an annoying bug... #484756: Cache strategy

here is the initial patch for this

More refined patch, decided to enable aggressive caching with boost.

committed.

Display # of pages for each cache & ability to flush entire cache (core or boost) on performance page.

moving additional things to #453426: Merge Cache Static into boost - Create GUI for database operations.
Main issue was fixed so marking this as fixed.