On 2 February 2016 at 02:40, R. David Murray <rdmurray@bitdance.com> wrote:
On the other hand, if the distros go the way Nick has (I think) been advocating, and have a separate 'system python for system scripts' that is independent of the one installed for user use, having the system-only python be frozen and sourceless would actually make sense on a couple of levels.
While omitting Python source files does let us reduce base image sizes (quite significantly), the current perspective in Fedora and Project Atomic is that going bytecode-only (whether frozen or not) breaks too many things to be worthwhile. As one simple example, it means tracebacks no longer include source code lines, dramatically increasing the difficulty of debugging failures. As such, we're more likely to pursue minimisation efforts by splitting the standard library up into "stuff essential distro components use" and "the rest of the standard library that upstream defines" than by figuring out how to avoid shipping source files (I believe Debian already makes this distinction with the python-minimal vs python split). Zipping up the standard library doesn't break tracebacks though, so it's potentially worth exploring that option further. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia