bug#27933: emacs25: default info dir initialization slow with remote filesystems

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 17:49:13 +0100
> From: Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>
> Cc: 27933@debbugs.gnu.org, 786707@bugs.debian.org,
>       Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org>, 786707-forwarded@bugs.debian.org
> 
> >2. Why on earth is emacs checking the info path at all on startup?

It doesn't do that here, not in the current development sources.
After I start "emacs -Q", (featurep 'info) evaluates to nil and
Info-directory-list is unbound.

> >   Shouldn't it wait until info functions are actually called for?

It should, and it does.

> >3. The documentation talks about setting INFOPATH in the environment
> >   to over-ride the use of this default directory list, but again
> >   using strace I can see no change to behaviour here at all if I set
> >   INFOPATH

My reading of the code is that if INFOPATH is set in the environment
of the shell from which Emacs is started, then the value of that
variable is used in preference to Info-default-directory-list.  Maybe
you didn't start Emacs from the shell whose environment you changed?