[pdftex] pdflatex 1.40.5 slow to start on Cygwin

[Thierry Bouche]

T> Why
T> might this be? `pdflatex --version`, by contrast, is
T> instantaneous, so the issue is likely something to do
T> with searching or loading formats.

yes, my best bet would be that the new pdftex binary will rehash its
ls-R ever and ever, or have to look in a non-!! texmf for some of its
startup files--the most probable reason might be that it doesn't
find texmf.cnf, or that the texmf tree is not organised as expected by
the binary (if the preexisting install is somewhat old, pdftex could
be looking a lot for its pdftex.map at startup, etc.)

maybe compare the output of

kpsewhich -prog pdflatex -debug 6 pdftex.map

and

pdflatex -kp 6 nfssfont

?

Th.