[Python-Dev] .pth files in current or script directory

Delaney, Timothy C (Timothy) tdelaney at avaya.com
Sun May 16 21:45:16 EDT 2004


Jeff Epler wrote:

> On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 10:11:23AM +1000, Delaney, Timothy C
> (Timothy) wrote: 
>> I don't use NFS so I've no experience with the performance problems
>> involved. Of course, Windows shares would have similar issues.
>> 
>> Hmm - would this objection go away if a specific filename were
>> mandated for these .pth files - e.g. pythonpath.pth?
> 
> Yes, searching for a single named file is a much faster operation than
> listing a directory, and would probably be a fairly small impact on
> Python startup, much smaller than listing a directory with many files.
> It's one round-trip to the server vs many round trips.
> 
> .. but that makes the feature somewhat different than .pth files in
> site-packages (any name vs a single name), which may be a bad thing
> too. 

Yep - I thought about this. OTOH, the use case for .pth files for
site-packages is multiple libraries packaged separately. The use case
for this feature is a single code base i.e. there would be no need for
multiple .pth files since everything is under control of the developer.

Please don't get the idea I'm all gung-ho about this - I'm just trying
to see if there's enough reason to write a PEP for it (either to be
accepted or rejected).

Tim Delaney



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