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Re: Correct location of .py and .pyc files



On Monday 17 November 2003 03:35 pm, Florent Rougon wrote:
> Terry Hancock <hancock@anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
> > There was some discussion on comp.lang.python about 
> > standardizing the bytecode awhile back, but the consensus
> > was that the standardized part of Python is *the source code*.
> > IMHO, they (/we) don't want to encourage obfuscated
> > distributions of Python packages.  Python is a very open-source
> > centric language and community.

> Rest assured, nobody on this list so far has been trying to have Debian
> ship bytecode-only Python modules.

Yeah, I know.  I was just trying to express *why* the community
doesn't want to make the bytecode highly standardized (in
contrast to Java, which makes it the top priority).

> What we are trying to know is if we can safely store sets of
> .{py,pyc,pyo} in /usr/share/package/ (in the case of .py files that are
> architecture-independent, which is almost always true). This requires
> the .pyc and .pyo to be architecture-independent because /usr/share is
> supposed to be shareable between several machines (via NFS, usually)
> whose architectures can differ.

When I wrote the previous message I was thinking this was pretty
unlikely to be good policy, even if it would work now.  But as I
think about it, maybe you're right and the pyc/pyo files will
remain arch independent -- they are processed on a kind of
virtual machine by the interpreter, AFAIK (which is not too
much -- I'm heavy Python user but not developer, so I've never
seen this code).  I think that heavy optimization (e.g. trying to
speed code up on a vector processor), will be the domain
of JIT compilers like psycho, and not Python itself.  Now I'm
curious too.

The place to ask is comp.lang.python of course, or perhaps
python-dev@lists.python.org if no joy there. In fact, I just
asked, so we'll see if I get any useful responses.

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com



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