Forcing modified XUL files and JavaScript to reload

One of the stumbling blocks that add-on developers frequently encounter is Thunderbird's caching mechanisms, which cache XUL and JavaScript files for performance reasons so that they don't have to be re-read from their source and parsed or compiled repeatedly. If you're developing an add-on and iterating through changes to XUL and JavaScript files, you may find that Thunderbird insists on continuing to use old versions even after you've changed them and restarted. There are three known workarounds which seem to work sometimes, though it's not clear (I mean, I'm sure it's clear to someone, but it's not clear to the author of this page) when each of them works. At least one of them should work in all contexts, so when you run into problems, try them all until one works.

nglayout.debug.disable_xul_cache preference

Go into the advanced preferences editor, create a boolean preference called nglayout.debug.disable_xul_cache if it doesn't already exist, set it to true, and restart Thunderbird.

-purgecaches command-line option

DMO claims that specifying the -purgecaches command line option when launching Thunderbird will force it to purge the JavaScript cache.

Tell XUL Runtime service to invalidate caches

Executing this JavaScript code inside Thunderbird will cause the XUL cache to be invalidated the next time it restarts:

Components.classes["@mozilla.org/xre/app-info;1"].
    getService(Components.interfaces.nsIXULRuntime).invalidateCachesOnRestart();

One way to make this happen automatically is by installing the userChromeJS add-on and then putting the code above into the file chrome/userChrome.js within your Thunderbird profile directory.