The documentation says that it is not flexible enough. However, it still works, also when the debug level is 0.
Forests are an automatic creation of CRUD. cakephp generates CRUD when baking.
Forests have the advantage of being designed for an early stage of development.
Read more
http://www.indywebshop.com/bestpractices/2007/06/13/early-impressions-of-cakephp/
but I suggest not using it, because at any stage you will need to write your own code. But for applications that don't change often, it really helps.
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