[pdftex] pdflatex 1.40.5 slow to start on Cygwin

[Theo Hopman]

[As requested, I'm transferring this discussion to the mailing list.]

My original support request was:
---8<---
I use Cygwin on WinXP pro, with teTex 3.0 installed. I
recently built pdftex 1.40 (which went well), manually
replaced the old binaries of pdftex, and rebuilt the
various formats using fmtutil. Now, however, pdflatex
starts up only after a considerable delay (anywhere
from a couple of seconds up to half a minute). While
pdflatex sits there looking like its doing nothing, it
also responds slowly to interrupt (^C) signals. Why
might this be? `pdflatex --version`, by contrast, is
instantaneous, so the issue is likely something to do
with searching or loading formats.
---8<---

Further information:
- pdftex is slow building formats
- kpswhich works as quickly as before the pdftex upgrade
- CPU usage is low (90% idle) while pdftex delays
- no network directories are in search path
- entire texmf tree is on local hard drive
- search paths were not changed with upgrade to 1.40
- behaviour is same in Terminator terminal and Windows console
- use of -recorder shows no unexpected (to me) locations being
accessed. Of course, I'm not an expert. I've attached the .fls files.

THeo
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