[IPython-dev] iptest on 0.11.alpha1.git

[Fernando Perez]

On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 5:21 AM, Thomas Spura <tomspur at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> The commit hash will be noted in the version at the startup
> automatically after this commit:
> http://github.com/tomspur/ipython/commit/e2e56f2917d941051e99a893f3e26989b78aaa53
>
> And the branch name will be there after this commit:
> http://github.com/tomspur/ipython/commit/7b5f6ed4abd9308b9fc2a2071a756b0aba3a680b
>

Mmh, actually the more I think about this, the more reluctant I am to
have anything that opens a subprocess or imports a whole repo-reading
module just to get a version string.  Operations like that have an
impact on startup time, and IPython is arleady slow enough to start up
as it is.

We should think carefully about how to get that information in the
absolutely fastest, most static way possible in all cases.  Recording
it in a file with post-commit hooks or something like the old
update-revno tool we had for bzr, but NOT with dynamic code run at
initialization time.

I really want our startup time to go down, not up.  A long time ago I
had a regular habit of starting up plain python and then ipython, to
compare the difference.   It used to be nearly undetectable, now it's
noticeable, and doing this kind of repo-spelunking at startup time
isn't going to help matters.

Sorry to go back a bit on your efforts, but I want to make sure that
we don't end up harming the everyday experience just to get a fancy
version string.

Regards,

f