I don't subscribe to this list, so replies meant for me will have to be sent 
directly to me...
If you set Info-auto-generate-directory to if-outdated, this is documented
to regenerate the directory when it's outdated or doesn't exist, but in fact
if the file "dir" doesn't exist, the directory is just ignored. Here's
a
patch to fix it, relative to 21.1.6, but the exact same code is present in
the current release in the cvs repository. I also note (though I don't have
a patch for it) that if you set Info-auto-generate-directory to always,
because that doesn't cause the Info-dir-newer-info-files variable to be set
up (in Info-dir-outdated-p), it has the effect of behaving like nil for
directories that have existing "dir" files.
   Tim
--- /pro/graphics/tmp/info.el	Mon Jun 11 16:12:04 2001
+++ /pro/graphics/tmp/newinfo.el	Mon Jun 11 16:13:18 2001
@@ -998,8 +998,8 @@
 	      (null (directory-files (file-name-directory file) nil "\\.info")))
     (if (not (find-buffer-visiting file))
 	(if (not (file-exists-p file))
-	    (if (or (eq Info-auto-generate-directory 'always)
-		    (eq Info-auto-generate-directory 'if-missing))	      
+	    (if (memq Info-auto-generate-directory
+                      '(always if-missing if-outdated))
 		(Info-build-dir-anew (file-name-directory file)))
 	  (if (or (eq Info-auto-generate-directory 'always)
 		  (and (eq Info-auto-generate-directory 'if-outdated)