[Python-Dev] PEP 370 and IronPython

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Christian Heimes wrote:
> Nick Coghlan wrote:
>> Importing yet-another-module for use in site.py doesn't sound like a
>> great idea, so it may make sense to migrate that information into the
>> sys module is this approach is taken. "sys.name" is a little generic
>> though - something more explicit like "sys.vm" would be better.
> 
> The platform modules uses additional modules like the re module. On my
> system "import platform" loads 7 additional module. The platform modul
> also uses multiple function calls and regular expression to detect the
> vm. I'm not going to blame the author of the function for the way the
> feature is implemented. It's the best way and I'd probably done it the
> same way, too. But it's an unnecessary slow down of every interpreter
> startup. 'sys.vm' it is.
> 
>> Implementation specific user directories sound like a good idea indeed.
>>
>> An alternative to a lookup table approach might be to be a little more
>> direct and just retrieve the final part of the user specific directory
>> name directly from a new function in the sys module. Then different VM
>> authors can choose any directory name they want without CPython's
>> site.py needing to know anything else about them.
> 
> 
> I like your idea. It might be a better idea to turn sys.vm into a struct
> like sys.float_info. The struct can contains a set of required
> attributes like an id, a capitalized name, the platform (C, .NET, Java)
> and the suffix for the user site directory.
> 
>>>> sys.vm
> sys.vm(id='cpython', name='CPython', platform='C',
> usersitesuffix='python26') # on win32: Python2.6
> 
>>>> sys.vm
> sys.vm(id='ironpython', name='IronPython', platform='.NET',
> usersitesuffix='ironpython26) # on win32: IronPython2.6

+1 on adding something like this, though, I'd use
sys.python_implementation or just sys.implementation
since not all Python implementations are virtual machines -
many compile to machine code or some intermediate format.

-1 on importing platform in site.py. Python's startup time is not
great to begin with and this would cause the load time to increase
even more.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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