[tex-k] speed of kpsewhich to get value of TEXMFLOCAL

[jfbu]

Hi Karl,

> 1) Defining environment variables often causes all kinds of trouble 

The place where I need TEXMFLOCAL and TEXMFHOME is a Makefile 
prepared for the users of my package (see my mail to
Andrew Komornicki), thus setting environment variables was
not an option anyhow.

> 
> 2) The "bottleneck" is not generic to any installation.  

ah! this is good to know, because I only have access to one other 
machine, which is under Linux/Fedora, and did not yet
check the issue there yet. I will do it soon.

> 
> 3) I have no knowledge as to what can be causing the absurd delay on
> Mavericks.  I don't use Macs.  Perhaps something (perhaps environment
> variables) is causing kpsewhich to actually search the disk for
> everything instead of just reading the ls-R files.  Running
>  kpsewhich --debug=1 --var-value=TEXMFLOCAL >&/tmp/out
> and then perusing the (voluminous) output might yield some clues.
> I don't know.  It's not going to come for free.

Thanks, I will try this, but can not report until a day or two because of
tight schedule now

> 
> 4) You could try asking mactex-support at tug.org.  Assuming you are using
> MacTeX and not macports or any of the other various TeX distributions on
> Macs (sorry if you already stated this, I can't remember and can't look
> it up right now).  Each Mac thing should have its own support forums.

I am using MacTeX, thus indeed I could try asking Richard Koch http://www.tug.org/twg/mactex/

Also maybe I could ask Adam Maxwell, the creator of TeX Live Utility
(GUI interface to tlmgr on Mac OS X.) 

best,

Jean-Francois