problem

On a windows installation we got:

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Zend_Cache_Exception' with message 'cache_dir "C:\htdocs\translate5\application/../data/cache" must be a directory' in C:\htdocs\translate5\library\zend\Zend\Cache.php:209
Stack trace:
#0 C:\htdocs\translate5\library\zend\Zend\Cache\Backend\File.php(177): Zend_Cache::throwException('cache_dir "C:
h...')
#1 C:\htdocs\translate5\library\zend\Zend\Cache\Backend\File.php(128): Zend_Cache_Backend_File->setCacheDir('C:\\htdocs
trans...')
#2 C:\htdocs\translate5\library\zend\Zend\Cache.php(153): Zend_Cache_Backend_File->__construct(Array)
#3 C:\htdocs\translate5\library\zend\Zend\Cache.php(94): Zend_Cache::_makeBackend('file', Array, false, false)
#4 C:\htdocs\translate5\library\zend\Zend\Cache\Manager.php(173): Zend_Cache::factory('core', 'file', Array, Array, false, false, false)
#5 C:\htdocs\translate5\library\ZfExtended\BaseIndex.php(142): Zend_Cache_Manager->getCache('zfExtended')
#6 C:\htdocs\translate5\library\ZfExtended\Resource\InitRegistry.php(47): ZfExtended_BaseIndex->initRegistry(O in C:\htdocs\translate5\library\zend\Zend\Cache.php on line 209

The given path exists, although the directory C:\htdocs\translate5\data is a junction to the real directory D:\Data\translate5.

This seems to be the problem in combination with the default path (which is given as ../data relative path to the APPLICATION_PATH) and the used junction.  The result is the above error.

solution

Configure the cache path directly in the installation.ini, consequently with slashes instead mixing back slashes and slashes:

resources.cachemanager.zfExtended.backend.options.cache_dir = "C:/htdocs/translate5/data/cache"