[Python-Dev] __file__ and bytecode-only

I understand the need to ship without source -- but why does that require supporting .pyc (or .pyo) -only? Couldn't vendors just replace the real .py files with empty files? Then no one would need the extra stat call, and no one would be bitten by orphaned .pyc files after a rename. [Yes, zips could still allow unmatched names; yes, it would be helpful if a tool were available to sync the last-modification time; yes a deprecation release should still be needed.] -jJ