🚀 go-pugleaf

I would *like* to use the subdirectory searching features for i.e
TEXINPUTS that recent versions of web2c provide, so I can keep all
sorts of packages isolated & not have to recompile TeX all the time.

I tried something where basically the top directory has nothing but a
4 or 5 subdirs, one of which (for contributed stuff) has in turn
several subdirs.  

The performance is awful: 5-6 seconds to the `This is TeX' prompt on
an unloaded Sun ELC with local disk, cf some tenths of a second with
an older TeX.

Is there any way to get this to work usably?  It seems to me unlikely
that any directory configuration will work, since it basically will
have to stat every file in the tree (over 700 here) regardless of the
flatness or otherwise of it.

If there is in fact no way to get it usable, then a compromise scheme
might be to have single-level subdir searching.  This gives most of
the advantages of multi-level but keeps the performance since you only
need to stat the files in the top directory.  Lucid Emacs uses this
approach with success.

Alternatively some file could be put somewhere which TeX & METAFONT
read to get a list of directories to search for stuff.  This at least
keeps the effort of reconfiguring it small cf recompiling everything.

--tim