Trent Mick wrote:
But this would not solve the problem with 8 byte versus 4 byte timestamps in the header on 64-bit OSes. Trent Mick pointed this out.
I kind of intimated but did not make it clear: I wouldn't worry about the limitations of a 4 byte timestamp too much. That value is not going to overflow for another 38 years. Presumably the .pyc header (if such a thing even still exists then) will change by then.
note that py_compile (which is used to create PYC files after installation, among other things) treats the time as an unsigned integer. so in other words, if we fix the built-in "PYC compiler" so it does the same thing before 2038, we can spend another 68 years on coming up with a really future proof design... ;-) I really hope Py3K will be out before 2106. as for the other changes: *please* don't break the header layout in the 1.X series. and *please* don't break the "if the magic is the same, I can unmarshal and run this code blob without crashing the interpreter" rule (raising an exception would be okay, though). </F>