[Distutils] Cache PYTHONPATH? (Re: make unzipped eggs be the default)

[Jeff Rush]

David Lyon wrote:
> 
> Third party libraries are rarely so big that they need to
> be compressed to save disk space.. on any of the systems
> that i know about anyway..

Hi David.  Not just your post but others here are making assumptions on
your own working environment.  Yes there are systems you need to save
disk space on, yes there are systems where you care about I/O
performance.  These are embedded systems.

Python has a strong and growing following on small devices such as
phones (OpenMoko), music players, settops, netbooks, OLPC/XO and such.
If you haven't been following it, the Python-on-a-Chip initiative formed
from several projects took place at PyCon 2009.  The language is in a
position to become the standard control language for devices, if we
don't hobble it by assuming Python is always run on a full-blown desktop.

This attitude of allowing Python to always grow larger is prevalent on
the core developers list as well, where they are removing the ability to
compile Python selectively to drop out those portions not needed on a
platform.  The attitude there was if the embedded folks want a stripped
down version they can create and maintain it themselves, redoing work
already done years ago.  But they won't -- they'll chose the path of
least resistance and choose a more lightweight language.

Pardon the rant.  I just get frustrated when people believe that the
path forward is faster and bigger systems on our desktops when actually
desktops are dying and will be rare in ten years.  Let's keep Python
lean and flexible so it takes up residence in the infrastructure instead.

And the benefit of defaulting to zipped eggs is that it enforces on the
developer the discipline of writing his packages to use pkg_resources
instead of file I/O, to retain the future option of alternate packaging
formats.  Developers know, especially those using
test-driven-development, that if you don't regularly test against an
environment, your code will gradually rot and no longer run in that
environment.

-Jeff