Question about disk hits and environment variables

Hey everyone. So we are gearing up for a trial run of Rez for our department at Imageworks. There has been a good amount of interest, and if all goes well we will have a strong case to make for other departments to adopt.

One concern that we have is the extra number of disk hits it will take when looking for plugins/scripts/libraries etc. Since every package installs itself into its own location, we face the possibility of having to search through many more directories than we currently do. We are being diligent with the number of packages we are creating, but it seems to me that over time the number of paths is only going to grow.

I'm curious if other studios have run into this problem, and if so, how they solved it. We have talked about having some sort of process that takes a resolved environment and centralises (or localises) all of its data into a single directory, although that seems fraught with problems... any insight would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

The issue names no files, tests, or implementation entry points and does not define a specific change. Start by reviewing the discussion about disk hits, package paths, and centralising resolved environments; a suitable contribution would need an agreed scope and acceptance criteria first.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.