[tex-live] TeXLive 2005 is slower than TeXLive2003

[Jinsong Zhao]

>I don't see an etex-based latex in the win32 binaries, but you could try
>the same test with a plain document, e.g., 
>  tex story \\bye
>  etex story \\bye
>  pdftex story \\bye

The following is the time statistics from both TeXLive 2005 and 2003:

-------->TeXLive 2005<--------

tex -time-statistics story
gross execution time: 94 ms
user mode: 6656 ms, kernel mode: 140 ms, total: 6796

etex -time-statistics story
gross execution time: 63 ms
user mode: 6671 ms, kernel mode: 46 ms, total: 6717

pdftex -time-statistics story
gross execution time: 437 ms
user mode: 6937 ms, kernel mode: 15 ms, total: 6952

-------->TeXLive 2003<--------

tex -time-statistics story
gross execution time: 63 ms
user mode: 421 ms, kernel mode: 31 ms, total: 452

etex -time-statistics story
gross execution time: 47 ms
user mode: 437 ms, kernel mode: 31 ms, total: 468

pdftex -time-statistics story
gross execution time: 593 ms
user mode: 671 ms, kernel mode: 78 ms, total: 749

>The multitude of extra system calls seem suspicious, as David said.
>Offhand, I'd guess that it is searching a big directory on the physical
>disk in one case and not the other, which is a function of the
>configuration files and not the binaries.

The TeXLive 2005 and TeXLive 2003 have been installed on the same disk.
And the directory of TeXLive 2003 is much bigger than that of TeXLive 2005.

BTW, my machine: 
cpu: AMD Athlon XP 1700+
memory: 512M
OS: windows xp prof. sp2

Regards,
Jinsong