[Python-Dev] .pyc location?

[Nick Coghlan]

Andreas Raab wrote:
> While googling this issue, I noticed that the status of PEP 304 says 
> "withdrawn" but since most of the discussion around it seems to be a 
> couple of years old, I thought I'd ask if anyone has done something in 
> this area recently. If not, a pointer to the place which manages these 
> mappings (or a starting point for further digging) would be greatly welcome.

As I recall, the PEP was withdrawn because Skip didn't have the time 
and/or level of interest needed to champion it any more, and nobody else 
was interested in taking on the task. What opposition that existed to 
the idea was based on the question of whether or not the problem was one 
that was worth spending significant effort on solving.

Issues with collocating the compiled files with the source files do 
arise occasionally, but they can generally be resolved by having root 
run compileall [1] over the affected directories. In cases where users 
are able to modify source files (hence leading to the need to recompile 
them after installation), those users are also typically able to write 
the necessary .pyc files to the same directory.

For the optimisation cases the PEP mentions (network drives, RAM 
drives), you can get the same effect (and more) by caching the whole 
application.

Cheers,
Nick.

[1] http://docs.python.org/lib/module-compileall.html

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
---------------------------------------------------------------
             http://www.boredomandlaziness.org