Looks like this was planned. Here's the constructor for CacheImpl where orginal developer made this a todo.

I'm at a point where I'm doing a lot of gynamastics to work around this issue, so consider this my +1.

public CacheImpl(SessionFactoryImplementor sessionFactory) {
this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
this.settings = sessionFactory.getSettings();
//todo should get this from service registry
this.regionFactory = settings.getRegionFactory();
regionFactory.start( settings, sessionFactory.getProperties() );
if ( settings.isQueryCacheEnabled() ) { updateTimestampsCache = new UpdateTimestampsCache( settings, sessionFactory.getProperties(), sessionFactory ); queryCache = settings.getQueryCacheFactory() .getQueryCache( null, updateTimestampsCache, settings, sessionFactory.getProperties() ); queryCaches = new ConcurrentHashMap<String, QueryCache>(); allCacheRegions.put( updateTimestampsCache.getRegion().getName(), updateTimestampsCache.getRegion() ); allCacheRegions.put( queryCache.getRegion().getName(), queryCache.getRegion() ); }
else { updateTimestampsCache = null; queryCache = null; queryCaches = null; }
}