RE: Release update

[Drew Adams]

> > That's exactly the behavior I see in Lennart's vanilla builds. It
> > either takes quite a long time or it comes up immediately. I was
> > thinking that it usually takes a long time, but trying now several
> > times in a row, it looks like it's about 50-50. Same thing for
> > Lennart's build.
> 
> A wild guess: We have experienced a similar slowness at startup for
> lilypond, caused by fontconfig which rebuilt the cache files each
> time.  The solution was to untick `Automatically adjust clock for
> daylight saving changes'.  More can be found in this thread:
> 
>   http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg42261.html

Wow. Interesting. I tried that, and the problem immediately "went away". And
it's still gone after checking the box again.

For the moment, I have "Automatically adjust..." checked again, and there is
still no problem. I'll try again some other day, and see if the problem really
went away. Before now, I've seen the problem systematically - every day. 

Maybe just unchecking, then rechecking that check box took care of the problem.
That would be good. If only it worked for the bugs too. ;-)

In the thread you cite, I see this:

"forcing a rebuild results in the same delay you're experiencing
every time unless the automatic clock adjustment is turned off for the
first run."

That makes me think that unchecking the check box, then starting Emacs 23, then
checking the box again will keep the problem fixed (which is what I seem to
see). That seems to say that it's enough that the automatic adjustment be turned
off "for the first run", which I guess in my case is for the first time that I
start Emacs 23. And later posts in that thread also suggest that it's OK to turn
the check box on again. BTW, I'm running XP (SP3), FWIW, but apparently Vista
also has this problem.

Veritable voodoo. If this truly is the problem and the fix needed, then perhaps
it should be cited in the FAQ, if it can't be prevented altogether. The thread
mentions a patch for fontconfig that fixes the problem - perhaps Emacs could use
that too.

Here is a summary of the problem, from that thread:

"seems that the problem occurs if the cache is first built
during a daylight saving period when the system is set to automatically
adjust the clock for daylight saving."

Thx! Very cool. The whole thread is interesting, BTW.