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 If you set Info-auto-generate-directory to if-outdated, this is documented to regenerate the directory when it's outdated or doesn't exist, but in fact if the file "dir" doesn't exist, the directory is just ignored.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to always, because that doesn't cause the Info-dir-newer-info-files variable to be set up (in Info-dir-outdated-p), it has the effect of behaving like nil for directories that have existing "dir" files.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- (eq Info-auto-generate-directory 'if-missing)) + (if (memq Info-auto-generate-directory + '(always if-missing if-outdated)) (Info-build-dir-anew (file-name-directory file))) (if (or (eq Info-auto-generate-directory 'always) (and (eq Info-auto-generate-directory 'if-outdated)