Plone Navigation Configuration and 'Root' setting very confusing

Plone Support
1

So, While configuring a new site, I came across the 'root' setting in the navigation controlpanel. I tried using this - creating a 'subsite' and setting the path to the object.

the behavior confused me so much, I think it might be a bug, but now I'm not quite so sure.

Here are the steps to reproduce what I'm seeing:

1: Create a plonesite, a folder, and a subfolder
http://localhost:8080/plone/folder/subfolder

2: Look at the contents of 'folder' ( localhost:8080/plone/folder/folder_contents )

I see 'subfolder' listed in the folder_contents - as you would expect.

3: Go to site-setup->Navigation
4: set 'Root' to '/folder'

The Navigation now has 'subfolder' and "home" links to localhost:8080/plone/folder/ - as expected.

5: go back to localhost:8080/plone/folder/folder_contents

Empty? Why? This is the bug.

6: ok, click the 'home' icon under content listing - now I see the content.
7: Add content under that, where did it go?

Set navigation root back to '/' and folder contents goes back to correct behavior.

8: notice that the content you created in step 7 is now at localhost:8080/plone/newcontent

This seems way too weird to me. What's going on here?

2

The reason I want to call this a bug is because I would expect a configuration setting under Navigation to ONLY AFFECT NAVIGATION. When that setting starts affecting things like folder listings and the location where factories are called, I think we have a cohesion bug.

I have worked around the issue by leaving the configuration registry 'plone.root' alone, and setting the INavigationRoot interface marker on the 'folder' - which seems to be the behavior I'm looking for.

I think the culprit is here, but I haven't yet pdb'd it to be certain.: